57. Make $500-$1,000 per month – Make money with charitable gifts: create $1,000-$2,000 per month worth of charitable gifts that are 50% tax deductible on your personal tax return
You can gift to any charity (home shelter, church) anything from your house and get a 50% tax deduction for it. Like $10,000 worth (4 big bags of clothing) of second-hand clothing, you can donate to your local church or Goodwill.
You'll be better donating items to charity anyway. For example, if you're going to sell a shirt for ten cents, you might be able to donate it to Goodwill and get a $1.00 tax write-off. That could save you more in taxes than you'd have gotten from selling it for cash.
Donate consumer electronics (like cellphone, flatscreens, iPhone, computers, Playstations) and get 50% back. Same way, you can donate your used car or antiques, furniture, jewelry (gold, watches, etc) and get a tax deduction of 50%.
If your children can help you get $1,000 per month worth of charitable gifts, you will get $500 per month of additional income. You can even barter/exchange or buy other people their clothes (like 1/10th the price) and donate them to charity. Talk to your tax adviser or accountant.
Even if you have no tax-deductible income, or no official income at all, (like the children), they can still donate their clothing to charity and tax-deduct this from the parents their personal income taxes.
You could do a deal with your kids, each kid gets $250 per month (the other $250 per month is for the household) if they can get $1,000 per month of charity donations, or for their own clothing give them the full 50%.
It would thus be possible to buy every year new clothing, new flatscreen, new laptop, new jewelry, new music system and donate it by the end of the year to charity for a 50% tax deduction and thus buy every year new clothing, consumer electronics, etc. on credit card.
That is usually a better deal than selling your stuff on Ebay, where you may only get 25% or less back. Your kids can go to the flea market, buy stuff there, collect receipts, donate the stuff to charity and split the profit with their parents.
You could also go to an arts dealer, that sells paintings, art or antique for like $1,000 each, you pay them $250 (like discount), you get $1,000 receipt, you donate painting, antique to charity, and pocket $250 of tax deduction profit.
You can also donate your children toys they don’t need anymore, old cellphones, consumer electronics, old watch, etc
There is probably an annual limit on the amount of charitable tax deduction of one person his personal tax return per year. If you file jointly (like husband/wife), this may be double.
Even if you only make $30,000 per year, you may be able to tax-deduct $10,000 per year from charity donations, thereby increasing your income.
Call the charities upfront so you know if they are willing to accept the donations you have in mind.
Talk to a tax adviser to follow all the tax procedures to claim the tax deductions in order to ensure you will get them. Donate to more than one charity (like 4 or 5 charities) which is better than everything to one charity, suppose in case your charity doesn't accept your donation. If your charity is not legal, they may deny your tax deduction after-all. Get legal advise and have your tax adviser claim the deductions professionally, not you yourself, to ensure the compliance with the tax code.
Same way, as soon as you have a charitable tax deduction receipt received, let your tax adviser double-check if the tax-deduction donation receipt is fully valid and according to the tax code. Charity tax deductions requires professional filing by a tax adviser so no issues can arise. The tax adviser may give you other ways to save on taxes, or claim tax credits you cannot claim by yourself neither through a computer tax-program.
Donate other people their stuff to charity for a 20%-50% commission:
Instead of filing a tax deduction yourself, you may ask a 20%-50% commission to people for your work donating their stuff to charity rather than to sell their stuff on Ebay.
A $5,000 tax deduction for them, may yield you a $1,000-$2,500 commission. Check out family places (parents, grandparents), your friends, etc. The easiest is to donate their clothing, antiques and consumer electronics. You may also think of buying 2nd hand (like 1/10 price) other people their clothing and donate them to charity to give you or other people an income tax deduction or tax refund.
You could turn this into a $1,000 per month business with little effort. Nobody loses, except Uncle Sam. Talk to a tax adviser.
Give Away Kids' Stuff to charity:
All the toys, clothes, and educational aids you’ve bought over the years are worth a lot more on your tax return than they are cluttering up your home. Use one of the many software programs (like Turbo Tax’s It’s Deductible) to calculate the “thrift store value” of your trash in order to turn them into tax treasure. The key here is to keep track of what is in all those big trash bags you drop off at the the local collection site or church rummage sale. You will be surprised at how fast those toys add up to a fat deductible.
If you donate your car to charity – less interesting than selling it for its market value:
For cars that will simply be sold for cash, you are allowed to deduct only the charity's sales price of the car--not the vehicle's market value. Your deduction is further limited by your marginal tax rate. For example, assume a charity sold a vehicle you donated for $3,000. If you were in the 28% tax bracket, your deduction would be capped at $840.
But you can deduct the full market value of vehicles that will be used by a charity for things like deliveries. So if you give away a car that will be used by the charity, and it has a fair market value of $5,000, your deduction will be $1,400, assuming a 28% tax bracket.
Regardless of how the car is to be used, be sure to get a receipt from the charity. If the charity sells your donated vehicle, it is required by law to send you a notice of the sale within 30 days advising you of the car's sales price.
Once you've donated the car, contact your auto insurance provider to drop the vehicle from your policy.
