I used to collect furniture for a charity, loading it into a big truck. The organization/charity would give a reciept stating that you had given us 1 desk, 1 cabinet, 2 chairs, and a desk lamp, and that the items were given to a IRS acceptable charitable organization, but we never put any value on them, such as saying the lamp was worth $5 and the desk was worth $50. That was up to you.
Well! That explains the deficit. And we’ve been blaming on the billionaires. No Fair!
The thrift stores in Chicago on Milwaukee Ave sell underwear.
I recall when I was a kid in the 70s, my mum would call up the Salvation Army and leave a bag of clothes outside the front door. They’d pick it up and leave a note on the door saying they picked up a bag of clothes and my mum could put any amount in she wanted.
I guess I should say “reasonable amount” 
How times have changed huh
For the sake of clarity, “underwear” means “cothing that comes into direct with the wearers anus”. Right?
I don’t know what the rules were in 1980, but the IRS requires a qualified appraisal if you claim a value of more than $500 for donating used clothing and household goods. (I think you have to file another form, too.)
My accountant has a table that lists the values we should use for items we donate, and has advised us not to claim more than that $500, even if we actually donated that much.
In Chicago on the thrift stores I mentioned, yes it means that. They have the plain white fruit of the looms for a nickel and the fancy silky boxers for $2.00
I would never buy underwear but I guess people do. If you like T-shirts, you can’t beat thrift stores.
Well, right there, I begin to have suspicions about this unnamed book.
During that time, Hillary was a partner at the Rose Law firm, one of the most prominent legal firms in Arkansas. She was their specialist in patent cases, And she was paid very well, earning much more than her husband got as Governor of the state.
So why would a high-priced specialist lawyer be doing the family tax returns, instead of having an accountant do them? Even many people of far more modest means hire a tax professional to do their returns.
So that statement itself seems unbelievable.
I don’t know about that. I remember reading a review of the “Whitewater” case in the “NY Times” book review section where the author said the Clintons did not do proper research on what they thought would be an investment that would fund Chelsea’s college tuition. They didn’t seek any outside advice and their administration was plagued by the investigation.
Plus I don’t think even the strongest Clinton critic has ever said the Clinton’s did anything illegal deducting underwear (unlike Nixon who backdated documents to get a deduction). They called attention because Bill was saying the American people were too stupid to know how to properly spend a tax reduction to show how money grubbing hypocritical they are.
Not exactly…
an appraisal is required only for a single item valued at $5000 or more
an extra form is required if non-cash deductions total $500 plus… but it is pretty simple and non-threatening
Good point, but actually the same source - the NYT - in a different article, does say it was $2/pair - http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/19/business/spending-it-it-takes-a-president-to-overpay-the-irs.html
“These and earlier returns, however, show that the Clintons do not object to taking advantage of tax breaks. When he was Governor of Arkansas, Mr. Clinton deducted $2 for each pair of used underwear he gave to the Salvation Army.”
Which is exactly what I took the other article to mean, as well, but you’re correct it didn’t specify. This one does.
The point of the information, in my mind, is it casts doubt on the public rich should pay their fair share type Clinton rhetoric, whereas in private they are deducting $2 for used underwear that might barely sell for that new, to avoid paying taxes.
And I don’t know if Hillary Clinton prepared these returns or not. To the poster who says why we should do that, she was making money at the Rose Law Firm. Well, she would have at least seen and presumably signed the returns and she also wanted the Arkansas taxpayers to pay for a pool at the governer’s mansion around that time - never occurred to her apparently, to donate it to the state - only to donate used undewear:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/interviews/morris2.html
“In January, a book by David Maraniss came out called First in His Class, that quoted me as saying that Hillary wanted a swimming pool built in the Arkansas governor’s mansion, and that I had talked her out of it because I was concerned about the political backlash–which is a true, if somewhat innocuous, story. She was very mad at me for doing that, and February, March, April, and May, didn’t talk to me; wouldn’t take my calls, wouldn’t return my calls, and I had nothing to do with her.”
Why am I back to this thread after all this year, by the way? I just got the notice about the site being hacked so logged in to change my PW and saw this old thread.
It doesn’t seem so strange to me. Every December we do a closet clean-out, and the goods go off to Goodwill, where I am given a signed but otherwise blank receipt, onto which I am expected to write the list of donated items. When I do my taxes, using Turbo Tax, it guides me through assessing value. I don’t care what the item is, I use the values provided by the software. I have no problem taking a deduction for anything I donate, including silly little things like underwear.
I would personally make many changes to the tax code, including some that would likely increase my tax, but in my opinion you follow the rules set by the IRS, and so you take everything they give. Not doing so isn’t civic responsibility, it’s a sucker’s play.
I really don’t want to hear “Bill Clinton’s underwear” and “sticky” in the same post…
It’s nice, this thread gets bumped every 3-4 years whenever vital information about the Clinton’s underwear comes to light.
Sweet! What size?
I’ve heard the “old underwear tax dodge” attributed to various people (last I heard, it was Bill, not Hilary who did the deed, and he only claimed $2.50). Given that some underwear sells for upwards of $30/pair, $2.50 - $3.00 is not outrageous.
Just because you are not clever enough to figure out that anything of value can be donated for a deduction, don’t blame the folks who are that clever.
Remember Trump dropping his pants to show off his (then $35) briefs?
For a really good tax dodge:
For a 100 years or so, Presidents had kept every scrap of paper that crossed their desks and, upon retirement, donated them to a university, taking a few million in write-offs for the historical vallue of them.
Story was that a ruling came down in the late 60’s which would make the paper worthless.
This, the story went, was why Nixon (of all people) rigged a system that would automatically record every word on tape. Including stuff he really should not have recorded.
All because he thought he could still get the write-off because it was tape, not paper.
that 18 1/2 minutes really cost him.
Clinton did once take an underwear writeoff, but it’s not like he had some kind of large scale underwear tax scam going on where they were trying to nickle and dime the IRS for his skid-marked underwear. He donated a suit valued at $75 and three pairs of underwear valued at $6 (three pairs sounds like an unopened pack that he didn’t want to me). The deduction on the suit is worth taking, but the donation receipt would have both on there. I imagine they were doing their taxes and he/she produced the donation receipt and their tax person asked how much they were worth. “The suit…probably $75. The underwear… nothing, maybe 5-6 bucks.”
My experience. And we (my wife) donates “out of fashion” clothes to Goodwill every year and I’ve never seen a 1099. She just writes her estimate of their value on the receipt.
So, yeah, it sounds totally reasonable that Hillary might have done that. And it doesn’t sound very unusual, or wrong, to me.
Plus, have you purchased underwear? 3$ a pair doesn’t sound overpriced, even in the 80’s depending upon the brand.
Being a newbie here, I recently read through the forum rules, one of which advised against resurrecting old threads and instead starting new ones.
Perhaps the person who bumped the thread doesn’t have the benefit of being familiar with the rules.
Looks to me like this thread was resurrected twice. Both times by Truth2011 who has posted exactly twice in his/her career at SDMB. We could argue about the quality of the new information provided but there was a new link or two in each of the resurrecting posts so a mod would probably say that both were legit.