Boat donation VIN

2 replies
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I have a client donating a boat/yacht to a charity. I have the Hull ID Number (HIN) and I input that into the VIN on screen 26.3 under “if donated property is vehicle please enter vehicle information”. Lacerte gives a critical diagnostic that the VIN is invalid (ref #2060117). I assume it is trying to validate against an automobile VIN (VIN is 17 digits and HIN is 12 to 14 digits). I can’t find any info on this, and wondering if I should just disable efile error before efiling and ignore this diagnostic. Or if I should contact Lacerte support.

Some additional information: The boat is over $5,000 and I am inputting it in Section B. The client did receive a 1098-C from the donee which shows that the boat will NOT be sold and will be used for at least three years (Significant Intervening use), so the client is taking a deduction for the FMV from an appraisal. I have selected “Vehicle” from the dropdown of “Type of Property”, because the IRS in the instructions for Form 8283 considers a boat to be a vehicle. If I change the type of property to “other”, the diagnostic goes away.

Lacerte Tax

BobKamman

Level 15

Did you try following the 8283 instructions -- “If the VIN has fewer than 17 characters, enter a -0- in each of the remaining entry spaces to the left of the VIN. For example, if the VIN is “555555X555555,” enter “0000555555X555555.”

J

JimS_1Author

Level 4

I had not tried that, but I just did and Lacerte is still giving me the invalid VIN critical diagnostic. Thank you for pointing that out, though. I hadn’t realized that was in the instructions.

I’m thinking I need to contact Lacerte to get them to fix this “validity check” since it should accept the VIN with the zeros in front. I don’t want to select “Other” on Section B Line 2 to get this diagnostic to go away since the boat is considered a vehicle.

But again, would appreciate anyone’s thoughts if they have encountered this.

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