How many of us have airline miles sitting in our accounts that we're either never going to use, or that really don't mean much to us anyways? If you want to clear out your old airline miles without spending $3,000 on the rest of the vacation, consider giving them away as a donation.



Unfortunately, you do need to understand that you probably should not consider your donated air miles to be a tax deduction. That's because all charitable donation tax deductions have to have a "fair market value", or a value that you would get if you sold them. The problem is that you can't sell your air miles -- the airlines forbid it. I have to put a cavet in that there are a few companies online offering to buy airline miles, and they do offer $1200 to $1700 for 100,000 airmiles, but they may well be scams, and their business model is indeed against the airlines' rules for air miles. You are not supposed to be able to sell air miles to a third party.

The "fair market value" for getting a tax deduction is also muddied by the fact that you never "bought" the airmiles. You never paid for them. The airline gave them to you for free as a thank you for when you bought a plane ticket. So because you never paid any money for them, its hard to say now that you're donating them that they have monetary value.

Despite not being able to deduct your contribution of air miles, they're still a great donation. You can help a lot of different charities be giving them. And a lot of charities will take them, notably Make a Wish, the Red Cross, Fisher House (a four star charity for veterans), the Dream Foundation and more. There are actually hundreds of charities that will accept air miles -- more than accept donated cars.

In addition to those charities, the Salvation Army also accepts airmiles. These miles are typically used to get Salvation Army personnel to crisis spots across the country (similar to what the Red Cross uses airmiles for). Another well-known charity that accepts air miles is the The American Cancer Society. They accept Delta and United air miles.

Keep in mind that some of the smaller charities may onlt take a specific brand of air miles, like United only, or American Airlines only. This may mean you can not give your air miles to the charity on the top of your donation list, but most of the major airline carriers do have lists of the charities that accept their air miles on their websites.