Does the holiday season leave your wallet lighter? Get some money back from Uncle Sam and make a positive impact on your community by donating gently-used clothing, other unwanted items or by making a monetary contribution to Goodwill for an end-of-year tax write-off. When you donate to Goodwill after cleaning out your closets, you get more than a tax deduction and less clutter. Goodwill uses the revenue earned from the sale of your donations to help local people with disabilities, those who lack education and work experience, and others facing employment challenges find jobs so they can become independent and self-sufficient.
Goodwill accepts clothing, household items, and furniture and provides donors with a receipt for tax purposes. To take advantage of your end of the year write-off, you need to beat the December 31st deadline. General guidelines for taking tax deductions can be found in IRS publications 526 and 561 and on Goodwill's website at www.gwct.org.
Many organizations are vying for donations at this time of the year. Goodwill urges donors to carefully consider to whom they donate their gently-used clothing and other household items this holiday season. Often people simply want to quickly clear out items they no longer use, and they drop those items at the most convenient location, thinking they are making a charitable donation. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Goodwill recommends that donors always inquire about where the money from their donation goes and how much of it is put into local service programs.
Taking the time to make sure you donation goes to the right cause can make a difference to local families. When you give to Goodwill, your donation stays in your community where it is used for critical job training, career services and support programs that employ people, strengthen families and build stronger communities.
###

