Qualified Appraisal

You inherit a house from your aunt. It's a complete recreation of Elvis's Graceland (a bit scaled down of course; your aunt wasn't the king of Rock 'N' Roll). The property is kitschy, but not your kind of thing. You want to donate it to the actual Graceland. You figure they can use it as kind of an auxiliary campus.

As part of this donation, you need to get the property appraised. You can deduct the value of the property from your taxes, as part of a charitable donation. But the people at the IRS weren't born yesterday. They know that some people might try to scam the system by overestimating the value of an item they donated...a rare $50,000 pack of dental floss to the American Dental Charitable Fund, or whatever.

So, to avoid these scams, the IRS has rules about who can do the appraising. Specifically, the valuation has to be done by a qualified appraiser, as determined by the IRS guidelines. In turn, the appraisal these folks provide is called "a qualified appraisal." It meets the IRS guidelines for the charitable donation.