Tracking Miles for Taxes

[Bod]

Just curious how everybody here is tracking their miles. Paper? An app? A spreadsheet?

You need to track the destination and business purpose of your trips. Does this mean you track every trip you take during the day. Say five different trips for five different appointments? Or do you just track the total miles per day?

Is it true that every single mile for business purposes (ie driving to a leads town) is worth $.535?

Suppose you drive 1000 miles a week 52 weeks a year for 52,000 miles. Thats 52,000 * .$535 = $27,820. Let's say you made $100,000 in profit that year. Would you deduct $27,820 from $100k and be taxed as if you earned $72,180 that year? Or would you deduct the $27820 from your entire tax bill? (I assume it's the former, because the latter sounds too good to be true.)

 

[Chris@ACAExpress]

Just curious how everybody here is tracking their miles. Paper? An app? A spreadsheet?

You need to track the destination and business purpose of your trips. Does this mean you track every trip you take during the day. Say five different trips for five different appointments? Or do you just track the total miles per day?

Is it true that every single mile for business purposes (ie driving to a leads town) is worth $.535?

Suppose you drive 1000 miles a week 52 weeks a year for 52,000 miles. Thats 52,000 * .$535 = $27,820. Let's say you made $100,000 in profit that year. Would you deduct $27,820 from $100k and be taxed as if you earned $72,180 that year? Or would you deduct the $27820 from your entire tax bill? (I assume it's the former, because the latter sounds too good to be true.)

I use an app called MileIQ on my andriod phone. It automatically logs the miles for me. Unfortunatly I can't answer the other questions... that's my CPA's job!

Here is a link to the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobiledatalabs.mileiq&hl=en

 

[jdeasy]

Just curious how everybody here is tracking their miles. Paper? An app? A spreadsheet?

You need to track the destination and business purpose of your trips. Does this mean you track every trip you take during the day. Say five different trips for five different appointments? Or do you just track the total miles per day?

Is it true that every single mile for business purposes (ie driving to a leads town) is worth $.535?

Suppose you drive 1000 miles a week 52 weeks a year for 52,000 miles. Thats 52,000 * .$535 = $27,820. Let's say you made $100,000 in profit that year. Would you deduct $27,820 from $100k and be taxed as if you earned $72,180 that year? Or would you deduct the $27820 from your entire tax bill? (I assume it's the former, because the latter sounds too good to be true.)

I write down the miles each day. The total. And yes, I deduct the miles. Last year it was about 35,000 miles. It's usually between 28,000 and 35,000.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

Taxbot...............20!

 

[Bittersweet614]

I use MileIQ also.
As long as you have your phone with you it will track all your trips by GPS location (you will need to have GPS location turned ON). Then you classify each trip as Personal or Business. It then emails you every month and at years end for your tracking purposes.

 

[HoosierLife]

I got one of those little mileage books. I'm keen on using technology to make life easier, but it would take me longer to open an app and input the info than using the old fashioned mileage log.

Plus most of those apps charge you.

 

[rousemark]

Just curious how everybody here is tracking their miles. Paper? An app? A spreadsheet?

You need to track the destination and business purpose of your trips. Does this mean you track every trip you take during the day. Say five different trips for five different appointments? Or do you just track the total miles per day?

Is it true that every single mile for business purposes (ie driving to a leads town) is worth $.535?

Suppose you drive 1000 miles a week 52 weeks a year for 52,000 miles. Thats 52,000 * .$535 = $27,820. Let's say you made $100,000 in profit that year. Would you deduct $27,820 from $100k and be taxed as if you earned $72,180 that year? Or would you deduct the $27820 from your entire tax bill? (I assume it's the former, because the latter sounds too good to be true.)

It reduces your taxable income to $72,180 which will save you about $8300 in FICA and Income Tax..

 

[shonceman]

App called Track My Mileage. I use the free version, which means I manually enter the odometer readings. But it calculates the total for each trip and each month, then I can email it to myself.

 

[pfg1]

I use a small spiral notebook, date, to/from, miles and purpose. Pretty simple. Been thinking about an app.

 

[Redward]

MileIQ. As above, brainless for forgetful, ADHD people like me who want to focus on the best use of my attention span. Have never regretted paying the small annual cost. Send my Accountant the File. Hands off, except for classifying the mileage Biz or Personal weekly.