Apologies to the author of this thread since I am not answering the original question, but I honesty don't understand the U.S. tax code sometimes. The United Way did not get $2400 in value from your donation, but they are perfectly willing to write you out a slip saying you donated goods valued at such. What does the United Way need more? Some frequent flier magazines or just a small percentage of the cash you spent on the magazines. Would they have preferred $100 instead of 40 subscriptions? At least with the Kelloggs cornflakes, nutrigrain bars, etc. AA miles promotion or the pudding guy's escapades, the donations to food pantries were somewhat consistent with what the recipients needed. In reality, what non profit organizations really need is CASH.

At the end of the day, this is just a tax subsidy from me to you. Ugh

There was a great article in the New York Times Sunday magazine about a year ago about the market for used clothing in Africa. A large percentage of clothing that is donated in the United States ends up in the trash or being sold in Africa and other impoverished areas of the world. Goodwill, the Salvation Army, the local church, and other charitable organizations simply have no good use for most of the clothing that is donated (they don't have the resources to warehouse all the donated used clothing), so it ends up being collected by brokers who (may) clean (yeah, a lot of clothing that is donated isn't even washed beforehand) and then sort the items before shipping them in bulk to Third World countries where they are sold (not distributed freely) as new or close to new. So that circa 1985 blazer you bought for $200 and donated to goodwill last year may end up being sold in Kampala for the equivalent of $10, or a month's wages. Goodwill probably got a couple of bucks at most for your suit while you got to claim a $100 or so charitable deduction. I love this country.


[This message has been edited by fallinasleep (edited 10-03-2002).]