<wayland1234[at]yahoo.com> wrote:

- quote -

It is lesser of cost or FMV. He should reduce the basis of
the house by at least the FMV of the clothes that he taking
a gift donation for. Do others agree with this?

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wayland1234[at]yahoo.com wrote:

- quote -

You'll want to be careful with this situation. For example,
will your friend have a long-term holding period [> one year]
at the time of the donation of the used/some new clothing?
If not, his deduction will be limited to his tax basis in
the clothes, which could be even more complicated to
establish than the market value...!

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A friend of mine just bought a house owned by an old gent
whose wife had died and wanted to move in with family. He
took only a few things, and left everything else, and I mean
*everything* - he filled up two dumpsters with junk just
emptying out the house.

Included in this was over 1000 pieces of this gent and his
wife's clothing, much of it new and still in the original
packages. Using values from the Salvation Army's valuation
guide, FMV is somewhere north of $10,000.

My friend plans on donating this clothing to a charitable
organization.

Questions:

1) Can he take a charitable deduction for this? He got the
clothes for free (I guess - the P+S for the house
specifically said "includes all contents of the house",
although it didn't break out a value).

2) If the answer to 1 is yes, since the combined value of
all the items is well over $5000, does he need to get an
appraisal? That's my interpretion from pubs 526 and 561, but
it seems weird to get used clothing appraised.

3) If answer to 2 is yes, does anybody know where you find
someone to appraise clothes? Art, jewelry, antiques, etc is
easy, but used clothing? The various charities he's called
won't give a statement of value along with the receipt.

Any help or guidance would be welcome. Thanks.

<< ================================================== ===== > << The foregoing is intended for educational purposes only > << and does NOT constitute legal OR professional advice. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting > << messages to this newsgroup are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2006) - All rights reserved. > << ================================================== ===== >