I don't think it was a scam. I donated my old car to charity back in 2002, got a blue book of $1200 on it and the charity probably got much more than that by sending it to a chop shop to sell its parts on the market. Everybody won there.
Now, thanks to this latest regulation, the charities are going to get less donations, taxpayers are left with one less tax break, and people are gonna be pissed off on both sides of the aisle. That ain't what I call a solution.
If the charity sent it to a chop shop, they sold it to the chop shop. How much did the charity sell it for? You can't take the disassembled value of the car as your figure because there is a lot of labor cost and other costs associated with running the chop shop.
When the car sells, that is the market value of the car. To use another figure is dishonest. Starting next year, it will also be against the rules.