@colonel_biggs wrote:
Many thanks for your very detailed response!
Because of your comments pertaining to a qualified appraiser, if I decide to break up my contributions to $5,000 or less, I suppose this would have to be agreed upon by the donee as well. The donee would have to sign Form 8283 for 2024, and then again for 2025, would it not? However, if I limit the contribution to $5,000, I do not have to obtain an appraisal of the items, if I understand you correctly.
This gets tricky. The IRS says that a form 8283 is required when you donate a single item or group of related items with a value over $5000. They provide little additional guidance on exactly what that means. I have always argued that if someone donates $3000 worth of items to Goodwill on June 1, and another $3000 of items on June 15, that is still probably one single donation in actual fact, and splitting it up to avoid the regulations is probably not going to be permitted, if audited.
But now, you want to spread the donation over 2 years. Would that be in name only, and all the property was physically donated in 2024? That's definitely not allowed. You report donations when they actually happen, and if you donate everything in 2024 and only report half, you lose the other half, no ifs, ands or buts.
If you actually want to physically spread the donation over two years (half the items will not actually be transferred to the recipient until 2025), then you have a situation where you are splitting what is one donation in intention, into 2 smaller donations, to avoid the appraisal rule. If that happened in the same year, it would be improper. I suspect it would also be viewed as improper if it happened over 2 years, but you may want legal advice. The IRS can apply a doctrine of "substance over form" where a transaction can be evaluated based on "what really happened", even if the paperwork shows something that is technically different. I would be careful about splitting the donation, unless you get professional legal or tax advice.
If the value of your donation is more than $500 but less than $5000, you need a letter from the recipient that acknowledges the donation (with some specificity, and it has to have certain other language--see publication 526, but the organization should already know this). The organization does not need to attest to the value in their letter, you do that via separate records, and you don't need any signatures on form 8283.
https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-publication-526
