Seth Breidbart wrote:

- quote -

I'm not sure, but I'd guess the answer to be "no." Among
other problems, the "right to use" is probably an ordinary
income property (not a capital gain property) and therefore
different rules would apply for charitable deduction
purposes.

MTW

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Seth Breidbart wrote:

- quote -

I'm not sure, but I'd guess the answer to be "no." Among
other problems, the "right to use" is probably an ordinary
income property (not a capital gain property) and therefore
different rules would apply for charitable deduction
purposes.

MTW

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MTW wrote:
- quote -

This is the correct answer to the original question.

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Stuart A. Bronstein <spamtrap[at]lexregia.com> wrote:

- quote -

What if his son then donated that use to charity? The son
is donating *all* of his rights in the property, so does he
get a deduction?

Seth

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Stuart A. Bronstein wrote:

- quote -

The point being, the rules for gifts for gift tax purposes,
and gifts for charitable deduction purposes are not, not,
not the same. This seems to be a point of frequent
confusion. <grin
MTW

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- quote -

I donate it to Friends of the (other) Library, a 501(c)(3)
organization. Someone there notices what it is, and calls a
dealer who offers $500. They take it.

So fair market value is clearly $500 (possibly more, since
the dealer immediately sold it to his customer for $700).
Since the charity sold it within two years, my deduction is
the lesser of fmv and the price they got, namely $500.

Seth

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"MTW" <mtwingcpa[at]yahoo.com> wrote:
- quote -

Funny. If he were to give, say, his son the exclusive use
of the timeshare for one year (assuming a value of more than
$12,000) the IRS would want to value it and require a gift
tax return to be filed.

But the same gift to charity would not result in a
deduction. I suppose that whatever deduction there would be
would come from the fact that income generated by the gift
would belong to the charity, not the donor.

Stu

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salmoneous[at]aol.com wrote:

- quote -

There is no deduction because you are only giving a PARTIAL
interest in the property, ie: the right to use it for a
week.

Now, if you gave your ENTIRE right, title and interest in
the timeshare ownership per se, you might have something to
talk about, deduction wise.

MTW

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Seth Breidbart wrote:
- quote -

But if the 'fair value' (is there such a thing for old
books?) is $200, the auction winner would have a charitable
deduction of just $300. This is the case when making any
donation and receiving something in return. If the OP rented
the place by the week, and claimed the property as an income
property, I'd suspect there would be a case that a fair
value is easy to establish and that would be the OP's
deduction. But the donor would just get the value in excess
of that figure (as a deduction).

JOE

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sethb[at]panix.com (Seth Breidbart) wrote:
- quote -

You're partly right. You can't deduct the full value if the
gift is to a private foundation. It also can't deduct the
full value if its use is unrelated to the exempt purpose of
the organization.

For example if it's a rare book but not a religious one, the
gift to a church will not result in your being able to
deduct its full value. (Technically you can deduct its full
value, but have to recognize the capital gain of its
increase in value.)

Stu

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Stuart A. Bronstein <spamtrap[at]sbcglobal.net> wrote:

- quote -

You can if it's goods.

For instance, you grab a bunch of books at the end of a
library sale, when they're asking people to just take them
away. A couple of years later, you notice that one of them
is a first edition of some rare book. You donate it to a
charity which sells it for $500. I think you get the
deduction.

Seth

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salmoneous[at]aol.com wrote:

- quote -

You can't get a deduction for something that really doesn't
cost you anything. Ok, it costs you the rent you could have
gotten, but that would have been taxable. So you aren't
considered to have given up anything for tax purposes.

If you have actual out-of-pocket expenses related to the
timeshare, you might be able to deduct the pro-rata portion
of those. But that's probably about it.

Stu

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I know that, in general, there is no tax deduction when use
of a time-share is donated to charity. Is always the case?
In particular... if there is a charity auction, you donate
one-week's stay in your timeshare as an item to be auctioned
off, the week's stay goes up for bid, the winning bidder
pays $500 to the charity.

I know one of the justifications for not giving a deduction
for time share use donations is you can't presume a value
for that use. But here we have a clear and established
value. Is there still no deductions?

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