detroitmama
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2004
- Messages
- 44
I've done tons of garage sales in the past, so I agree that they are tons of work. The hard part (other than all the sorting, cleaning, pricing and setup), is that you can put in all that work and then if the weather turns bad or you just get an off day or two with no crowd traffic, then all your work is for less than $100 profit.
I agree that if you have large items, a garage sales makes more sense. You get a better return on a selling a dresser for $50 than if you donated it to charity. Even if your taxable value was $100, you would have to be in the 50% tax bracket to get the $50 out of it. But for smaller stuff, like a nice pair of baby overalls from the Gap - lets say you sell those at a garage sale for $2 (if you're really lucky.) You could instead donate those to charity for a fair market value of like $8, then your 25% tax bracket return would be $2. Sounds like a ton less work to me.
My advice would be that if you had a ton of big items, you could hold a garage sale, or simply place a classified ad to sell those items. Small items are better sold on ebay, or simply donate them and either find the fair market value on the Salvation Army website, or buy yourself the It's Deductible tax software (made by Turbo Tax.) I used this tax software this year to itemize a huge donation I made after my last garage sale was rained out. For one garage sale worth of stuff, I figured that I saved almost $800 on my taxes. I spent a lot less time figuring my taxes with the software then setting up and taking down that garage sale!
About itemized deductions - I am not an accountant, but my understanding is that if you do itemize your deductions (normally you do if you own a home), then you need to find out what income bracket you are in to decide how much tax return you get for your donation. Most people will be in the 15-30% range. You can find this information on the irs.gov website.
Good luck, and I really hope that people continue to have garage sales, because I'm addicted to them.
I agree that if you have large items, a garage sales makes more sense. You get a better return on a selling a dresser for $50 than if you donated it to charity. Even if your taxable value was $100, you would have to be in the 50% tax bracket to get the $50 out of it. But for smaller stuff, like a nice pair of baby overalls from the Gap - lets say you sell those at a garage sale for $2 (if you're really lucky.) You could instead donate those to charity for a fair market value of like $8, then your 25% tax bracket return would be $2. Sounds like a ton less work to me.
My advice would be that if you had a ton of big items, you could hold a garage sale, or simply place a classified ad to sell those items. Small items are better sold on ebay, or simply donate them and either find the fair market value on the Salvation Army website, or buy yourself the It's Deductible tax software (made by Turbo Tax.) I used this tax software this year to itemize a huge donation I made after my last garage sale was rained out. For one garage sale worth of stuff, I figured that I saved almost $800 on my taxes. I spent a lot less time figuring my taxes with the software then setting up and taking down that garage sale!
About itemized deductions - I am not an accountant, but my understanding is that if you do itemize your deductions (normally you do if you own a home), then you need to find out what income bracket you are in to decide how much tax return you get for your donation. Most people will be in the 15-30% range. You can find this information on the irs.gov website.
Good luck, and I really hope that people continue to have garage sales, because I'm addicted to them.
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