Subject: Re: Harris and the Dem tax proposals,
What happens if prior to liquidation the coin goes no bid, or the painting is discovered to be a fraud? It gets very complicated.

The IRS cracked down on this sort of thing long ago. If you donate a car to one of those charities (Kars 4 Kidz, for example) or land or a building or whatever, you used to be able to “declare” the value and take the deduction. Now you only get the realized cash value, so when Kars 4 Kidz finally disposes of the asset they tell you what it brought, and that’s the value, not some arbitrary number plucked from thin air.