Have you ever cleaned out a room and ended up with two or three (or more) garbage bags full of castoffs for donation? Maybe you dropped the bags off at Goodwill, got your receipt for tax purposes and then lost the receipt or forgot to use it when tax time finally rolled along. You may have been able to claim hundreds of dollars in a tax deduction!
To keep this from happening again, you might want to enlist the services of DoughNation Services, located right here in Portland. They find that most people underestimate the value of the stuff they donate, so they go through your stuff for you and assign appropriate values to it.
Here’s how they work: When you have at least a garbage bag-worth of stuff to donate, you call DoughNation Services, and they come and pick it up. Then they itemize all the stuff, assign a value to it and donate it to the appropriate charity. Afterward, you receive a folder from them containing an itemized list, the value of each object, a CD of photos of your stuff, tax receipts from the charity, IRS form 8283, and their invoice.
It sounds like an expensive service, but I think it’s a fair price to pay when you are donating at least four boxes or two garbage bags-worth of stuff. For eight tall kitchen bags-worth of stuff, you will pay about $199 for DoughNation to take care of it for you. They find that you usually can claim over $1000 on your taxes for that much stuff.
It’s a very useful resource and a great time-saver. And you might as well benefit financially from all your organizing efforts! DoughNation Services can be reached at 503-320-8213.