A grandmother’s scheme to inflate charitable deductions backfires. She bought heavily discounted clothes, which she immediately gave to charity. She deducted the original price of the items and not what she ultimately paid for them. Over a three-year period, she reported $85,000 of non-cash charitable contributions on her tax returns as a result of her shopping and donating tactic. Not surprisingly, the Service selected her return for audit and disallowed most of her deductions. The write-off is limited to the clothes’ fair market value at the time of the donation… in this case the amount she paid after the discounts (Granger, TC Memo. 2018-117).