ItsDeductible vs DeductionPro for Valuing Donations

By TFB

If you donate clothing and other household items to places like Salvation Army or Goodwill, the tax law says you can deduct the fair market value of your donated items. The IRS places the responsibility for coming up with a fair market value on you, the taxpayer. The places that accept your non-cash donations only give you a receipt for what you donated. They don’t tell you how much the items are worth.

If you use the standard deduction, you don’t have this headache. Charitable donations are included in the standard deduction. You don’t have to separately track and value your donations. If you use itemized deductions because you have more deductions than what the standard deduction allows (state income tax, mortgage interest, property tax, etc.), or because you are subject to the AMT, you must estimate the value for your donations.

The two major tax preparation software TurboTax and TaxCut both bundle a deduction estimate module that attempt to solve this problem. The program for TurboTax is called ItsDeductible. The one for TaxCut is called DeductionPro. They both do pretty much the same thing: they put an estimated value on your donated stuff based on price information they gathered from various sources. When you say you donated a sweater, they tell you how much it’s worth.

Most people probably don’t realize you can use these programs online completely free of charge. You don’t have to use the associated tax software by the same vendor. You can mix and match if you want. It’s just fine if you use ItsDeductible with TaxCut or use DeductionPro with TurboTax. You can use either program even if you use TaxACT or do your taxes with pen and paper. Both programs ask you to register but you don’t have to give your real name or address. Here are the links:

Do they give the same values for the same items? No. I tested with a hypothetical list of items (all in medium/average quality) and here’s what they came up with:

  ItsDeductible DeductionPro
a pullover sweater $9 $4.42
a pair of adult athletic shoes $11 $4.37
an adult short winter coat $17 $10.51
a 20″ tube color TV $18 $23.56
a 17″ CRT monitor $9 $15.45
Total $64 $58.31

For the test batch, ItsDeductible gave a higher value. It may be the opposite for your items. If you donated a lot of stuff, I don’t see why you can’t enter them into both programs and see which one gives you a higher value. In terms of usability, I like DeductionPro better. After you are done entering your donations in DeductionPro, you can print an itemized list of what you donated and the value of each item. In ItsDeductible, you can also print an itemized list but the list doesn’t include the value for any item. Or you can print a summary of the total value for your donations, but without itemization. It’s weird. I don’t know why ItsDeductible does it that way.

These programs are meant to be used throughout the year. As soon as you make a donation, you enter it into the program. That way you don’t forget about what you donated. While the value estimates are not perfect, using the values provided by these programs probably beats pulling a wild guess out of air.

Software picked, likely related posts:

Posted on January 26, 2009 under Taxes. Keywords: .

Leave a comment

Comments

14 Comments on ItsDeductible vs DeductionPro for Valuing Donations

  1. Jim on January 26, 2009
     

    The charities around here won’t touch a CRT monitor or TV with a ten-foot pole, other than a high school that wanted large-screen TVs for classroom use. Maybe you should be allowed to deduct the fee that you pay to have them recycled.

  2. James on January 27, 2009
     

    Wow, I have no idea that the stuff can have decent deduction value. In the past, we donated bags and bags of stuff and we never bother to keep detail records of what we donate so we always low-balled the value at tax time to avoid red-flaged the auditors. Thanks for bringing this up.

  3. Grant on February 12, 2010
     

    We’ve used ItsDeductible the past few years and have been happy with it. Maybe I’ll try DeductionPro this year for comparison…

    @James – I know what you mean! Who knew the value could be so high? But the government doesn’t give you the full value anyway. I think when we’ve submitted the values as determined by ItsDeductible, we get about a quarter of that back in our return.

  4. Michael on April 14, 2010
     

    ItsDeductable will print an itimized list with values. Here is the catch — the “free” online version does not have full functionality. You have got to get TurboTax deluxe or better.

    As the ItsDeductable online site clearly indicates, values are only “estimates” until you download into TurboTax. At that point it adjusts for current pricing. I don’t use the online, so can’t say if there is really much change on pricing or if this is just gimmick.

    This is the first year I’m using TaxCut instead of TurboTax (strictly a price decision, since TurboTax has gotten quite expensive). I find the included version of DeductionPro to be much more difficult to use. I actually ended up going to last year’s TurboTax to use ItsDeductable from there.

  5. richard haag on January 18, 2011
     

    I would like to copy deduction pro & its deductible if I could get to them. HELP is the proper words.

  6. jozie on January 26, 2011
     

    can anyone answer this? in the process of going through my donations-which throughout the year were many, I decided to try to print. I used Its Deductible, to try to compare what I would end up with as a total, becuase I have already done a very detailed valuation from the Salvation Army’s own donation valuation guide on their website.
    Anyhow, after setting up to print my donations in turbo tax’s its deductible, I previewed first. I noticed there were several sections, one of them stating, “where aquired”, “when aquired” and “allowable”. I was slightly disgusted and am now wondering if after painstakingly entering all of this stuff in, as not only did I have two kids these past 2 years, but now my spouse and I are moving, so lots of stuff donated, but I am wondering if the IRS is going to only allow donations that WE ourselves originally purchased. I have been given MANY MANY things from family and extended family and friends. I have not used much and kept everything in top quality shape. I documented each item and photographed for my own records in case of an audit, along with photocopying the salvation army or goodwill receits- but could my total value donations be rejected because I myself don’t have original purchase receits?? Please let me know I wont continue with the hassle even though this could have a huge benefit for my family since we are living on one-income. thanks!

  7. Gasport on January 27, 2011
     

    Deduction Pro does not have 2011 recording while its Deductible does…. Simple choice for this year.

  8. lois elam on February 19, 2011
     

    Deduction pro online is usless for 2011. Impossible to open after saving!

  9. Steve on March 2, 2011
     

    Jozie -

    When you are given stuff you acquire the giver’s basis. In other words, they effectively transfer to you the “how much” and “when” of whatever they give you.

    That said, the IRS knows people usually can’t dig up receipts. And they don’t require it. Obviously you had it to donate, and it cost more than thrift shop value to acquire new. Ballparks are allowed. If you take your thrift shop donation value total for each donation, triple it and round to the nearest ten or hundred for your basis, you’ll be fine (for example, $833 of thrift shop value becomes $2,400 of approximate purchase cost, $159 of thrift shop value becomes $480, or maybe $500). What you want to avoid is taking a number like $833 or $155 and translating it to $2.499 or $477, since exact amounts like that indicate “real” costs vs estimates. Real costs have to be exactly defended in the unlikely event of an audit, estimates obviously can’t be.

  10. Amy on March 24, 2011
     

    As a previous post stated, I too, cannot re-open deduction pro. Very frustrated!

  11. RAS on April 3, 2011
     

    Deduction Pro is a HUGE waste of time. I spent hours putting in items, saving about every half hour. Even changed the file names every couple hours. Now everything is LOST, each file opens up empty.

    Save yourself a lot of grief, use something else, or just a pad of paper or a spreadsheet.

  12. Jozie on April 4, 2011
     

    Thank you Steve. I appreciate you taking the time to answer. Be well, Jozie

  13. Robert on December 29, 2011
     

    Deduction Pro used to be a PC based production free with the H&R Tax Software, now called, At Home.

    As PC software, it provided some labor saving tools, inluding fair market value for clothing donations.

    Starting 2011, the product was web based. Now it got clumsier to use: start the internet, locate the file, accept the file, etc. it took a minute or two just to get started. In August, when I was using the web based version, something crashed (IE8, Deduction Pro, not sure), my PC based Deduction Pro file was trashed. I had a backup, but it was a month old. It took me a hour to reconsruct the file.

    In December 2011, the Deduction Pro web page was unavailable for 15 plus days while they got ready for the new version, so I could not put in deductions during that time period. When the new version was ready, I imported 2011 data. It TOTALLY screwed up my non cash donations: Much higher values were used. I called H&R Block about the problem – nothing happened. I manually fixed it, by reentering the information.

    When I went to enter new cash donations, it got worse!!! First it didn’t bring up the current date, requiring you to go through the calender for each donation.

    But the real big problem was it started to create duplicates of entries. Each new donation, and file doubled in size and donations.

    Bottom line, if the PC version Deduction Pro saved me a couple of hours a year when preparing my tax return, I spent over 8 hours this year in fixing the web based version file.

    I am not using this software again. I can create a simple spread sheet to record my deductions, and place those values into my tax return. If I need to look at the fair market value, I will just print off the values and put the sum in my spread sheet.

    Shame on H&R Block for screwing up a good product. I still use the At Home for my personal and business tax returns.

  14. Carlos Bendiks on January 12, 2012
     

    I agree with almost all the previous comments re: DeductionPro (DP). I used it for the years 2008 & 2009 when it was downloadable into my PC and it worked fine. With TaxCut 2010 it became a web-based product and it was a nightmare to use! I then reverted back to the 2009 version, entered all my data then printed it out and manually entered the required totals into the IRS schedules in TaxCut 2010. Thus one has a detailed record to back up one’s return.
    I received the HR Block (TaxCut) 2011 in the mail. I tried to purchase it online but it was very confusing & not working properly, so I abandoned that effort. I went to OfficeMax & purchased the Deluxe version (advantage is that one gets a CD and it was sold at a discount!) since it showed the DP unavailable for the cheaper version, Basic, then I find out that it is available online for free! Misleading information on their cover box! However, this version is only on their web-site & I found it very clumsy to use (lost files, not very detailed, etc.).
    I will use the DP 2009 version on my PC and identify the file XXXXX_2011, & print out the data.

Tell me what you're thinking, but please don't spam. See comments moderation policy.