Car Donation - How To Find An Authorized Vehicle Donation Center
What do you do when you have a car that you would like to donate to charity?
An authorized vehicle donation center, recognized by charitable organizations and the IRS, will be able to take care of your vehicle, find it’s best and most charitable use and give you a verifiable receipt for your tax forms.
But, how do you know your vehicle is being used for the charitable purposes the supposedly authorized vehicle donation center claims to support? There are several signs, especially when you’re looking online for such a service or responding to solicitation, that you’re dealing with a non-authorized vehicle donation center.
A quick check with even one or two of the charitable organizations (preferably ones you’ve heard of before) should yield an acknowledgement of the authorized vehicle donation center’s association as an agent of that charity. Any legitimately authorized vehicle donation center will be able to provide you with a list of charities it brokers deals for.
Though very few authorized vehicle donation centers are registered with the IRS as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, the charity you donate to must be. Without this badge of approval from the tax authorities, you’ll not be allowed to legally take the deduction. Even worse, this can set you up for an audit and no one wants to mess with that kind of attention. A truly authorized vehicle donation center will be able to provide you with their tax ID number so you may check it on the IRS website.
Several states additionally certify authorized vehicle donation centers on their own. If your state is one of these, you can easily check with the state attorney general’s office to see if the donation center you’re considering is listed on the state non-profit rolls. If not, you may not be dealing with an authorized vehicle donation center at all.
The authorized vehicle donation center is most often, in fact, over 95% of the time, a for-profit venture. The donation center must follow certain rules of conduct with regards to how you may be enticed into vehicle donation. There may also be a register of organizations that are not allowed to do business in the state.
How To Donate Your Car To Charity