Year-End Charitable Giving Empties Closets, Fills Stores

Year-end charitable giving empties closets, fills stores

By BO EMERSON

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Monday was a good day for relief — from taxes and clutter.

Citizens seeking one respite or the other lined up their cars 12 deep at the Goodwill Industries Roswell Store and Donation Center Monday, as off-duty police officers conducted traffic.

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Elissa Eubanks/

Pat Sullivan of Crabapple opens an hors d’oeuvre tray she is contemplating buying at the Goodwill Store and Donation Center in Roswell Monday. Sullivan is a regular customer who was at the store’s 1996 opening. During this time of year, many sites see an influx of donations so people can get their tax break for the year, Sullivan, however, is shopping.

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A team of seven regular employees plus four temporary workers and a few assistant managers efficiently moved the stream of cars through lanes marked with orange plastic cones. One group retrieved donated clothes, shoes, books, lamps, furniture and other household items. Another group wrote up receipts for the goods received, for those looking to write the donations off their 2008 taxes.

George Staska, of Goodwill of North Georgia, said Goodwill expects as many as 20,000 people will drop off donations at the group’s 25 stores and 40 donation centers Wednesday, as last-minute donors hurry to beat the Dec. 31 tax deadline. That will bring the total for the year to about 1.2 million donors.

This annual traffic jam is familiar to most charitable groups that accept donations of household goods, cars and other items. After the Christmas shopping season comes the closet-cleaning season, when families recycle the old to bring in the new.

At the Salvation Army’s donation centers in Washington, D.C., drop-offs will triple from 100 to about 300 a day this time of year, said Major Paul McFarland. McFarland is in charge of the district’s adult rehabilitation centers, which are funded by such in-kind donations, which are sold at Salvation Army family stores.

But not all donors are worried about taxes.

“I’ve got three children coming home from college, bringing things home, and I said that this is it. There is no more space,” said Kathy Davis, of the Windward area. Davis and her daughter Elizabeth, 20, drove a black Hummer filled with bags of clothes, including racks of her late husband’s suits, to the Roswell Goodwill store.

Thrift store shoppers know this is peak season for new inventory at such stores, so the shopping also skyrockets, said Goodwill’s Staska.

Inside the Roswell store Monday, business was brisk. Among the shoppers was Pat Sullivan of Crabapple, a store regular who lined up when it opened in August 1996. Sullivan was not concerned about clutter, and, indeed, seemed to be courting it.

“I’m looking for Crocs, even though I already have 32 pairs,” she admitted, pushing a buggy already stuffed with throw pillows and an appetizer tray. “Whenever we send someone down to the basement to work on the furnace, we tie a rope around them,” she said, to keep them from getting lost among the knickknacks.

Staska said donations that stores see range from the mundane to the bizarre. One year a man brought in a new grandfather clock, still in the packaging; another year, a pediatrician donated a set of old-fashioned baby scales. “We sold every one of them.”

The economy hasn’t had much of an effect one way or the other on donations, Goodwill spokesmen say. “Most businesses are contracting, but we’re looking to expand,” said Staska.

A recent poll by the nonprofit Pew organization found that more than four out of five Americans said they donated money to a charitable cause in the past 12 months, only slightly fewer than reported doing so three years ago.

Still, Salvation Army officials said donations to their stores are down this year by about 10 to 20 percent.

“Folks aren’t buying new items, so they don’t have the older items to donate,” said McFarland.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DEDUCTIONS

Basic tax-deduction rules on noncash charitable contributions, courtesy of Atlanta accountant and tax adviser Robert M. Swaim of Swaim & Associates:

• Contributions must be made to a qualified organization, such as a church, nonprofit school or hospital, Red Cross, Goodwill, etc.

• Your deduction value is generally the fair market value of the property at the time of the noncash contribution, which is generally far lower than its original price.

• Any noncash contribution requires a receipt from the qualifying organization. For a contribution valued at more than $250, you must have written acknowledgment from the organization.

• You have to itemize deductions to be able to deduct charitable contributions. Standard deduction filers cannot deduct them.

• If your total deduction for all noncash contributions is more than $500, you must fill out IRS Form 8283 Section A. If you make a contribution of noncash property worth more than $5,000, an appraisal generally must be done. In that case, you must also fill out Form 8283 Section B.

• There is an overall limit on the contributions deduction for any year of 50 percent of adjusted gross income. If contributions exceed this limit, the unused portion can be carried over for up to the next five years.

For complete rules: www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html