Donating a recreational vehicle is a big decision, and not something you should make up your mind about over coffee, but if you meet the right requirements donating your recreational vehicle can be a major "win-win" for both you and the charity you donate the RV to.



Make no mistake -- in most cases, you will usually make more money by selling the RV yourself or even trading it in at a dealership or used vehicle outfit. One major way to know if donation will help you is to confirm which tax bracket you are in for IRS income taxes. For 2010 taxes, for example, if you earned more than $373,650 of taxable income and file under single status, then you owe at least 35% of your taxable income in taxes. That's a lot more wiggle room for a deduction on an RV donation to work than, say, someone who earned only $32,000 in 2010, who is only in the 15% tax bracket. In other words -- and at its simplest -- the more you earn, the more of a benefit you can get from donating an RV (or any other vehicle, for that matter).

Of course, a call to your CPA is a wise idea before you take too many steps toward donating your RV. Only your personal tax preparer can know all the details of your situation well enough to give you the precise calculations on what an RV donation could mean come April 15th.

Another factor that might make you a good candidate for RV donation is if your RV is an older model, and you've been trying to sell it for some time and you're not having any luck. If - after a few months of having no success selling your RV -- you've dropped the asking price down to where it already feels like you're giving it away, then donating the RV may not seem like much of a loss at all. Its clearly not worth what you hoped it would be (or there are just too few buyers near where you live), and it may occur to you how nice it would be just to have the RV out of your front yard, whether you make any money or not. And, of course, it would be nice to have to stop making appointments with people who said they wanted to buy your RV but ended up being no shows. If you donate the RV, you make one call to schedule the pickup, and you're done... if you let your accountant or CPA handle the paperwork.

You will need to find the right charity to donate the RV too - not all of them will take it. Some major car donation companies that take RVs include actiondonation.org, donateacar.com, carsforcauses.net, donateacar2charity.com, and Habitat for Humanity. Remember, that's just some of them. To be sure that the charity you want to give the RV to is qualified in the eyes of the IRS, make sure it is a 501c3 entity. Check the IRS's publication 78 to get the complete listing of all charities in the US that can take cars and vehicles (including RVs) and have those donations be tax deductible to the past owners. Check out all the details of the new IRS rules for donating any vehicle in our article, listed in the right column on this page.

One final and very good bit of news is that some RV donations to some charities can get what's called a partial cash payment. This is a way for you to get both a financial benefit from the tax deduction and some cold hard cash from the charity, in a kind of discounted sale of your RV to them. To learn more, Google, the term "partial cash payment" or "IRS bargain sale", or ask your CPA about it.