Regardless of what the IRS allows you to deduct for mileage, what about the time it takes to do the driving? Your customer doesn't take into account that the cost of operating the car is not the only expense involved. On a day that you have to drive 4 hours to get your appointment, you could tune two pianos in town in the same amount of time. Somehow, that needs to be covered, too. I think $1 per mile is not enough, unless you charge it for both ways. When I used to do out of town work in St. Louis, I would charge $1 per mile one way. But that was back in 1999 and 2000. With the price of gas and the increase in what we charge our customers, I would think at least $1.50 one way would be appropriate. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -----Original Message----- From: Conrad Hoffsommer <hoffsoco at luther.edu> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 7:14 am Subject: Re: [pianotech] Mileage charge Daniel Carlton wrote: > ok guys help me out here. i live in the panhandle of texas, and i travel > to eastern new mexico to tune. not long ago i told a customer from that > area that i divide my total mileage charge by the number of > customers/appointments i get for that particular trip, and that if i > only had three appointments the mileage charge per customer would be > about $75. i just had another customer call me and i n a very nice way > told me that they don't want to lose my services in that area, so > couldn't i just charge $50 and wouldn't that cover my gas, and couldn't > i just consider that an expense of running the business and deduct it on > my taxes? > > i've been questioned about my mileage charge, but i've never had it put > to me that way. i charge what i charge based on what other technicians > have suggested. what would any of you have said in response to that > question? > > right now, i charge about $1 per mile for mileage. i'm going up on my > price if gas goes up again considerably. i figure that covers my gas, > wear and tear on my vehicle, and my time to drive four hours round trip > to tune /their/ piano at /their/ request. > > Daniel Carlton > FWIW: IRS deduction for 2008 had 50.5¢/mile 1/1 to 6/30 and 58.5¢/mile 7/1-12/31. That's what I charge(d). -- Conrad -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090407/cae88498/attachment-0001.html>
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