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Hi All, I would love some opinions on this. I have a lovely antique doll house listed for close to $600. I received an email from a school who is re-doing a late 1800s one room school house and they asked if I would consider donating it to the school. It would be on display for thousands of children – which is sort of cool 🙂
Since it is a school, I would be able to use the donation as a tax deduction. However, I got wondering… since they contacted me though ebay – how would ebay look at this? It would basically be doing business outside of ebay. I certainly wouldn’t want to get kicked off ebay if I decided to donate it. Any thoughts? Also any tax people with opinions on the deduction would be appreciated as well. I emailed my tax person, but haven’t heard back yet. TIA! -
It may be genuine, but the first thing that struck me is how strange! Would a school genuinely be searching eBay for donations? What an odd thing to do! Not only that, but they’re asking for a donation of $600? That sounds a little forward. Have you checked out the school, done a verification that they’re really who they say they are, doing what they say they’re doing? Just a thought…
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No, it’s legit. It was a teacher who is involved in the restoration who contacted me and gave multiple links to articles on the restoration. I don’t think people consider it odd because the donor would be getting a tax deduction. Normally I just ignore requests like this, but I am sort of considering this one because I could totally see it displayed in a setting like that.
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There are at least 2 ways to do this and keep you legit with ebay.
You could create a coupon code for the buyer, equal to $600. The buyer checks out and applies the code. They pay zero, but ebay still gets their cut.
You could have them buy the item but not check out. Then you send them an invoice reflecting a $600 discount.
There may be other ways, too, but those are what come to mind.
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Oh, in that case, way cool!
I googled “donating a listing” and got a ton of stuff regarding eBay’s charity programs, and nothing about this. So then I thought about how I would handle it. If a friend or family member saw an item on eBay and asked for it, I would just end the listing and give it to them. eBay doesn’t like sales transactions off eBay that were institued on eBay. This isn’t a sales transaction. You’re ending the listing because you changed your mind about selling it, and want to donate it to a good cause. In that case, just end the listing for reason “this item is no longer for sale” and then arrange for the school to do their own shipping. IMHO.
Of course, you could always phone eBay and ask! 😉
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Thanks so much to both of you for responding. Much appreciated! I’m still not sure what I am going to do. Wishing my tax lady would hurry up and respond…
Amatino – I had to laugh thinking about calling ebay & asking them 😉 Can you imagine the poor customer service rep trying to respond to a weird question like this?! LOL
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Why just just end the listing?
No one will read the eBay messages without a reason to.Even if they do so what?
they won’t contact the school and ask them …
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Just thought I would update. Finally heard back from my tax lady. She said the only donation I could deduct would be based off the price that I ORIGINALLY paid for it. Bummer! So that totally makes it not worth hassling with. I was completely wrong in thinking it would be based on the price I was asking for it. Oh well…
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huh. that’s odd. That would mean that if you received something as a gift and then donated it, you wouldn’t be able to get any tax benefit from that, which seems wrong…
I do my taxes using turbotax software, and whenever I go through the donations I made to goodwill during the year, it gives me the choice of saying that I used “thrift store value” as the method of valuing my donations, so if I got something for 25 cents at a rummage sale but it typically goes for $10 at a thrift store, I put it down as a donated value of $10. I mean, think of the people who donate stuff that they’ve inherited (i.e., paid nothing for) – they definitely get a deduction for that.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the situation…
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I think her tax lady is wrong.
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Yep, you guys are correct. My tax lady realized that the school would be giving me a letter showing that they received the donation – and that would be my “receipt” for taxes, so she agreed that it was ok. I have been super busy lately & just hadn’t gotten around to posting the update. Glad it will be working out! Jay and Ryanne always talk about how they see the perfect buyer for an item & I could totally see this in a setting like this – so I am thrilled to send it to it’s new home!
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Thought you guys might enjoy an update on this topic: It turned out perfectly!!
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