Isn’t used car donation supposed be a simple and risk free process? Simple may be, but you need to take some basic precautions to safeguard your situation.

Transfer title

If you don’t make sure that your car title is transferred to the new owner, you run the risks of paying parking tickets and violations for which your new owner may be responsible. Never forget to fill up paper work for transfer of your title and make sure that the charity report the transfer to the state’s department of motor vehicles. You need to follow-up with the charity after a week or so upon your used car donation.

Donate cars directly to charity and avoid ‘for-profit’ intermediary.

There are many middlemen who are NOT non-profit organization advertise convincingly on Newspaper, billboards and Television offering assistance in your used car donation to charity. The problem is that these folks eat half of the value used car and the charity only get s fraction. You are better of dealing directly with charities. Verify if the charity are you are planning for your used car donation has 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the IRS and ask for a proof. Look at BBB. Check with your church, as they may be qualified. Refer to IRS Publication 78, Cumulative List of Organizations described in Section 170(c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, is a list of organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions. Here is a tip: Use IRS online version to conduct a more efficient search of these Organizations.