I'm sorry for your loss, vickij. When my father died, my brother took the deduction on the items we donated because it was more beneficial in his tax situation than ours. However..... my DH is now telling me that was not *proper* although to my knowledge, my brother has had no issues with the IRS - probably because the donation was not significant enough to trigger any IRS alarms. According to my DH, you must take possession of the items at least until the estate is settled, possibly longer, before you can donate as yours and take a deduction. Otherwise, the deduction rightfully belongs to the estate. PLEASE check this out with a CPA or your tax adviser - my DH is a business owner and has a lot of experience with various tax situations but is not an expert.

My background is that I am a CPA who worked for H&R Block for 18 years. This is my first year not working for them so I have no personal interest in answering your question. Over the years I have had to handle many widows and widowers who had no idea how to handle their taxes. Very often they brought in every document they had EXCEPT the one I needed. I think that your money would be very well spent by going to Block at least for the first year. The Tax Cut program is Blocks and they can import the data from the prior year so they know what they are looking for from the prior year. Bring in the last two years of returns and have them check them for you as they may find errors and can amend them for you. I almost always found errors that got people a bigger refund than what they had to pay me in fees. If you do decide to do it yourself, I'd suggest that you bring the finished return and your source documents to a local Block office and have it checked. I never charged for this and you may get lucky and find a like-minded preparer. In either case, I would suggest calling and making an appointment. ALWAYS avoid the last week of Jan and the first week of Feb as that is their busiest time of the season. If you can wait until March it is the slowest time. I'd ask for the most experienced preparer in the office. Good luck!

I use Turbo Tax and let it do all the hard stuff about deciding which forms to send in. About interest, if the financial instution sent only a report of items to report and no official forms, then enter the data on the appropriate form(s). The report tells you which boxes to enter various data. Carefully enter the data exactly as shown. The institution has already reported this data to the IRS. If your return is one of the randomly selected ones for initial screening, I suspect that an automatic comparison is made between your reported data and that reported by the institution. A difference may flag your return for further audit. Consult the IRS booklet or website for proper forms and instructions. BEWARE: I am not a tax expert. The forms that I used were: 1099-INT for interest 1099-DIV for dividends 1099-R for income taken from an IRA that was funded by pre-tax money. If you dad is over 70.5 yrs old, and has an IRA that was funded with pre-taxed money, make sure that he is taking the Required Minimun Distrubution each year. The penality for under-drawing is hefty. However, due to the bad economy, the RMD was temporarily rescended for 2009 and one may take as little as desired.

As I said ... ... if you're interested in giving out interest-free loans ... ... let me know where the line-up starts, so that I can get into it before it gets too long. I won't borrow to invest in consumer items, as that means that I eat stuff this year that I won't pay for till next year, which means a reduction in next year's income due to paying for this year's eating. Not only that - I have to pay rent to the lender of the money for the use of his/her money. However - I may borrow to invest and expect to be doing so, soon, as the markets stay low. I've made three purchases in recent months using cash and have another to do soon. Plus I'm being forced out of one holding, which includes Canada's largest phone co., as it's being sold and taken private. That will free up some more cash in a few months. My bank told me a few months ago that they'd charge me prime rate, 6.25% on a fully-secured (by certificates of mutual funds and stocks) Line of Credit. I calculate that I can borrow to invest in high-quality stocks at almost no net cost. As interest on loans for investment is deductible, if I'm in 25% tax bracket, that reduces my effective cost to just under 4.75%. Core stocks, the kind that I'd planned to use for retirement, often pay about 3% dividend, which has been (Canadian) tax-advantaged for years and just became more so, meaning that I'll have about 2.5% in hand after the tax is paid ... which reduces my effective cost to just under 2.25%. Suppose I borrowed $10,000.00 15 years ago, agreeing to pay interest-only, and had done that (which I don't like doing - I want to pay down some of the principal as I go along ... I'm using this calculation for illustration). If I went in to pay off the loan now, how much would I have to pay? Right - exactly $10,000.00. And it will buy a lot less now than 15 years ago when I borrowed it. With inflation running at 2 -3%, that means that I borrowed the money at just about no cost. A couple of days ago, the bank says that they'll charge me at prime interest rate, now, 5.25%. Deduct tax at 25% is about 1.3%, moving down to slightly under 4%. As above, I receive about 2.5% after-tax from the stocks in which I invest, taking me down to just under 1.5% net cost. But inflation is running at 2 - 3%, and some expect it to go higher, somewhat due to increased fuel costs, that affects most stuff that we buy, incl. strawberries from Mexico in January). So it looks as though I'm gaining, at these rates. Suppose you put $10,000. into the bank 15 years ago, enticed (seduced?) by the bank's highly touted guarantee that, apart from the rent on the money, they'd repay every dollar that you'd lent to them, at the end of the contract. They never mention the corollary to that guarantee - that they won't pay one dollar more, either. Unfortunately for you U.S. folks, the inflation rat went into the bank and chewed off a corner of every dollar that you'd lent to the bank, every year that they'd held it. It'd have to be $5.00 bills for us Canadians, as our Loonies and Toonies are made of long-lasting, rat-tooth-hating metal. Actually, the rat wouldn't find your money in the bank - they lent out about $8.00 for every dollar that everyone deposited. Money in their till is like dollar bills in your wallet/under your mattress - they ain't workin'. So the bank took your $10,000. 15 years ago and lent it to me. Now, you want your money ... and I come to the bank to pay off my $10,000.00 loan ... that they then pay to you. I paid my loan with lower-valued dollars, and you got the same number of lower-valued dollars. I gained from inflation - you lost! Have a weekend that includes some effort expended to learn how money works - an excellent hobby - that pays well! ole joyful