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Tax breaks of all sorts are pouring out of Congress, but there's one goody that our elected leaders may crack down on.

They are concerned about supersized deductions for giving cars, trucks, boats and other vehicles to charity.

A bill now in conference committee would make it harder to misrepresent the value of a donated vehicle.

That would be a second source of worry for taxpayers who want to do well by doing good.

The first worry is the long-standing question of whether your favorite charity gets any significant portion of the value of your gift. A recent study from the Government Accountability Office says charities often receive less than 5 percent of the value claimed as deductions.

All this doesn't mean that giving your old car to charity is a bad idea. But it does demonstrate that honest and good-hearted donors should be very careful in selecting which charity gets the old clunker.

The problems exist because there is plenty of money to be made and because there is little or no government oversight.

In 2000, at least 733,000 taxpayers claimed deductions for donated vehicles, according to the GAO report. Their tax savings came to $654 million, although the GAO admits that is a very rough estimate.

Auctioneers, used-car dealers and other third parties in all likelihood made profits much larger than that.

On the enforcement side, the Internal Revenue Service hasn't paid attention, at least until recently. The reason, according the the GAO: Other connivances result in much more serious revenue losses. Some state governments have spotted wrongdoing here and there, including sales proceeds that never got to the charities involved, and used-car lots that claimed to be charities but were not.

On the whole, however, most taxpayers, charities and auto sales agencies didn't have to worry that they might get caught.

You have to remember what Atlanta's Andrew Young once said, back when he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: "If you turn the lights out, folks will steal." He spoke after the 1977 New York City blackout, and he was thinking of an entirely different class of looters, of course.

The GAO report contains some real jaw-droppers. It traced, for example, the case of a 1986 Toyota 4-Runner. The owner claimed a charitable deduction of $3,950. The vehicle actually sold for $300. The charity received $5.

Another taxpayer claimed a $4,999 deduction for a 1995 Toyota pickup truck. Note that if the taxpayer claimed just $1 more, he would have had to get a written appraisal and fill out more IRS paperwork. The truck sold for $1,800, and the charity got $1,290.

Taxpayer greed is not the only problem. Many charities, especially smaller ones, hook up with a dealer or auctioneer and turn the program over to that third party. The charity may get a flat rate per car, perhaps $75, no matter what the eventual sales price.

In a recent hearing, the Senate Finance Committee uncovered one case in which an auctioneer disabled a car, sold it for a song to his own used-car operation, fixed it and resold it for a fair price.

Consumer advocate Clark Howard recommends the Salvation Army (call 1-800-958-7825) and the National Kidney Foundation (www.kidney.org/funds/kidneycars/index.cfm) as worthwhile charities. (He also recommends Goodwill Industries, but the Atlanta organization does not accept cars.)

One other alternative: Sell the car yourself, then give the cash to your favorite charity.

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