Can a non-profit donate a vehicle to itself?
Transactions where a charity appears to donate an asset to itself create confusion about IRS prohibitions and proper classification. This makes it difficult to determine how to legally handle vehicle sales and proceeds when the organization owns and transfers the asset internally.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Treating the action as a simple asset sale or exchange transaction rather than a donationDid this help you?
- 2Recording standard journal entries such as debiting cash and crediting the vehicle assetDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The charity owns the vehicle. The charity is donating to the vehicle to be sold for charity proceeds which they are donating to itself.”source ↗
“I ask because a charity is donating a vehicle to itself. I wonder if the IRS prohibits this.”source ↗
Where this came up
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