[merem]

I have some big clothes in my closet I need to donate to make room for some new smaller clothes.

Is there a special procedure for donating clothes to goodwill? I donated last December and all I did was keep track of how many things I donated into categories of shirts, pants, etc. Now DH says I have to take pictures of everything I donate. Is this true? What do you all do when you donate if you want to claim it on your taxes?

[dawn78]

We donate all the time and we've never taken pictures. The place we donate to always give us a receipt but we fill in the number of boxes / bags ourselves and assign a dollar amount to it. We’ve never had any issues, but “knock on wood” we’ve never been audited either!

[BarbaraB]

Merem, I've been claiming deductions on my taxes for over 20 years and never took a picture of any of it. You do need to list on the receipts what you donated and assign a reasonable dollar value to it. As long as the dollar values are not more than what good will would charge for it, I think you are just fine. So I think for most shirts it would be 1 or 2$ and most pants it would be 2-5$. If you have any question as to what they would cost, just go in the Good will store and look at similiar items. I usually am a chicken and put very low values on it, so the IRS won't question it.

[Lynx]

There is a recent IRS tax change effective last year. I remember hearing about it and looked it up. Here is the wording on clothing donations from the IRS site irs.gov

"For all donations of property, including clothing and household items, get from the charity, if possible, a receipt that includes a description of the donated property. If a donation is left at a charity’s unattended drop site, keep a written record of the donation that includes a description of the property and its condition."