keeping records of donations

[abhe8]

So I need to do a better job of keeping track of donations this year, so I can use on itemized deductions for taxes. In the past, I just take my bags to goodwill and don't even bother with a receipt. I started to read the IRS guidelines on record keeping in order to use non-cash donations as itemized deductions, and it seems a little daunting. using the goodwill and turbo tax Its Deductible guidelines, I'm sure my year end totals will fall between $500 and $5000 for clothing, furniture and household items. What is the best way to document and keep track of all of this?

[tobitonic]

Are you donating enough (or making little enough) that itemizing will save you more than the standard deduction? Because it's around 6k for individuals and 12k for couples.

[Bracken_Joy]

I take a picture of my donations and save them to evernote, and do my recipt based on that. Then I do Its Deductible. So far, it's always made sense to do the standard deduction though. There's some sort of 5 year rule, though, so it always has seemed worthwhile to do it anyway.

https://www.taxslayer.com/support/530/charitable-contribution-carryover

You can carry over your contributions that you are not able to deduct in the current year because they exceed your adjusted-gross-income limits. You can deduct the excess in each of the next 5 years until it is used up, but not beyond that time. Your total contributions deduction for the year to which you carry your contributions cannot exceed 50% of your adjusted gross income for that year.
A carryover of a qualified conservation contribution can be carried forward for 15 years.
Contributions you carry over are subject to the same percentage limits in the year to which they are carried. For example, contributions subject to the 20% limit in the year in which they are made are 20% limit contributions in the year to which they are carried.
For each category of contributions, you deduct carryover contributions only after deducting all allowable contributions in that category for the current year. If you have carryovers from 2 or more prior years, use the carryover from the earlier year first.
For examples and more information refer to page 15 of Publication 526.

[Kaikou]

Tax act has an app for this but I haven't use it yet.

[abhe8]

Yes, we already itemize. And with a marginal rate of 28% for 2015, anticipate the same for this year, I expect the tax savings will be not insignificant. Just looking for the easiest way to keep up with is all.

We file with turbo tax, so I've started in its deductible, saving the paper receipts and an electronic photo of each donation.