IRS Form 8282: Filing Rules, Deadlines, and Penalties

IRS Form 8282, the Donee Information Return, is the form a charitable organization files when it sells, exchanges, consumes, or otherwise disposes of donated non-cash property within three years of receiving it. The filing goes to the IRS within 125 days of the disposition, and a copy goes to the original donor. Its purpose is straightforward: the IRS uses it to compare what the donor claimed as a deduction against what the charity actually got when the property left its hands.

When a Charity Has to File

The trigger is disposition of donated property within three years of the date the original donee first received it.¹ Sale, exchange, consumption, or any other form of disposal all count. Whether the organization gained or lost on the transaction is irrelevant, and it does not matter whether any money changed hands. The clock runs from the original donee’s receipt date, not from the date any later organization got the property.

The deadline for filing with the IRS is 125 days after the disposition.² The organization also has to furnish a copy of the completed form to the donor.¹

Which Donations Are Covered

Form 8282 applies to charitable deduction property: donated property other than cash and publicly traded securities where the donor claimed a value above $5,000 for the item or a group of similar items given to one or more organizations.¹ In practice that’s real estate, artwork, jewelry, collectibles, and shares in closely held companies. These are the items a donor would have listed in Section B of Form 8283, the appraisal summary attached to their tax return.² If Section B of Form 8283 was involved when the property came in, Form 8282 is on the table when it goes out.

Dispositions That Don’t Require a Filing

Three categories fall outside the requirement:

Items the donor certified on Form 8283 as having an appraised value of $500 or less.³
Property the organization consumes or distributes for free in carrying out its exempt purpose. A food bank handing out donated groceries, or a hospital putting donated equipment into patient care, has no Form 8282 obligation for that use.²
Motor vehicles, boats, and airplanes, which are reported on Form 1098-C instead.³

What Goes on the Form

The statute lists what has to be reported: the donor’s name, address, and taxpayer identification number; a description of the property; the date the donor originally contributed it; the amount the organization received on disposition; the date of the disposition; a description of how the organization used the property; and a statement of whether that use was related to the organization’s exempt purpose.¹

That last piece carries weight for the donor. Part IV of Form 8282 includes a certification, signed under penalty of perjury, that the organization’s use of the property was substantial and related to its exempt mission. For donated tangible personal property, that certification is what protects the donor from having part of their deduction recaptured.

When One Charity Passes Property to Another

If a donee organization transfers the property to another charity rather than disposing of it, both organizations can end up filing Form 8282 if either later disposes of the property inside the three-year window.³

To make that possible, the transferring organization has 15 days to give the successor donee its name, address, and EIN, a copy of Section B of Form 8283 it received from the donor or a preceding donee, and a copy of any Form 8282 it filed.³ The successor donee has 15 days to send its own name, address, and EIN back. Without that exchange, the successor cannot properly complete its own Form 8282 later.

Penalties for Missing or Botching the Filing

Form 8282 falls under the general information-return penalty rules. Filing late, filing an incomplete return, or filing one with incorrect information carries a standard penalty of $250 per return, capped at $3,000,000 for all failures in a calendar year.⁴ Fixing the problem within 30 days of the due date drops the penalty to $50 per return; fixing it after that but by August 1 of the same year drops it to $100.

Intentional disregard is treated differently. For returns required under Section 6050L, the penalty becomes the greater of $500 or 5% of the total amount that should have been reported correctly, and the annual cap does not apply.⁴

What Form 8282 Means for the Donor

The donor copy is not just a courtesy. It can change the donor’s tax bill through a recapture rule that applies to donated tangible personal property. Recapture applies when all of these are true:

The donor contributed tangible personal property valued at more than $5,000 and claimed a deduction that exceeded their basis in the property.
The organization disposed of the property after the year of the contribution but within three years of receiving it.
The organization did not certify that its use was substantial and related to its exempt purpose, or that the intended related use became impossible.⁵

When recapture applies, the donor has to include the difference between the deduction claimed and their basis in the property as income. It goes on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, for the tax year in which the organization disposed of the property.⁵ The Part IV certification on Form 8282 is what stands between the donor and that outcome.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6050L – Returns Relating to Certain Donated Property
2
Internal Revenue Service. Charitable Organizations: Substantiating Noncash Contributions
3
Internal Revenue Service. Form 8282 – Donee Information Return
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6721 – Failure to File Correct Information Returns
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 526 – Charitable Contributions