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Tue 20 Mar, 2007 07:22 pm
Is it legal for a 501(c)3 approved charity to solicit the gifts of used cars to it by offering inducements to the donors. The inducements include free two night stay at a hotel. The donor is given a receipt for the donated car that can be used as evidence to support his or her tax deduction. The receipt does not mention the hotel stay that the donor received nor its dollar value.
If it is illegal, what law or regulation does it violate?
Re: Solicitation by Charities - Offering Inducements
gollum wrote:Is it legal for a 501(c)3 approved charity to solicit the gifts of used cars to it by offering inducements to the donors. The inducements include free two night stay at a hotel. The donor is given a receipt for the donated car that can be used as evidence to support his or her tax deduction. The receipt does not mention the hotel stay that the donor received nor its dollar value.
If it is illegal, what law or regulation does it violate?
You can go to the IRS site and read up on it or just call them and ask.
Here are a couple links to start you off with.
http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96102,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=124191,00.html
It is legal in MA and fairly widely done. The "charities" that tend to do that sort of thing are all scams though.
Yeah, some money goes to the charity but very little of it. One of the local TV stations has been hounding some of them and it looks like less than $.10 on the dollar actually makes it to the charitable group in a lot of the car/boat/RV donation racket.
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