Nobody seems to be grasping what I'm trying to say, so I'll try it again, another way. 2009 IRS says 55 cents per mile. I have two tuning in the same day. (a) 30 miles from home (base) one way (b) 40 miles from home (base) one way (a) 30 miles x 2 = round trip from home (base) = 60 miles x 55 cents per mile = $33.00 mileage charge (b) 40 miles x 2 = round trip from home (base) = 80 miles x 55 cents per mile = $44.00 mileage charge Total mileage charge = $77.00 -- Duaine Hechler Piano, Player Piano, Pump Organ Tuning, Servicing & Rebuilding Reed Organ Society Member Florissant, MO 63034 (314) 838-5587 dahechler at att.net www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com -- Home & Business user of Linux - 10 years Duaine, Having gone through several full audits (randomly selected 3 times) from the good lads at the IRS, I can tell you that th eIRS considers the travel from your "home office" to the first customer the equivalent of "driving to work" and the last call of the day as traveling "back from work" This results in disallowing the "to and from mileage of first & last calls. After my research and paid legal discussions with a corporate NY tax atty./accountant, we determined that it was not worth fighting the tax man. That being said, I did come up with two well advised and truly legal methods of circumventing this issue. The first one was that I opened a post office mailbox at the nearest PO office. I had all my business mail directed to the government locatoin that became my first and last stop of the day. Dropping off mail and picking up business mail accordingly. I also would make trips to the bank as well. These stops validated the IRS' definition of the starting and stopping of an official work day and thus the only non deductable mileage was to and from the post office. All calls inbetween were deductible per the IRS' rules. Many years later I opened a shop away from my home. The shop then became my first and last location point and all service calls in between was mileage deductible. Of course any personal trips (kids school, baseball practice, golfing.. more golfing, etc) during the day were not allowed and deducted for the totals. Another reality regarding audits is: IF they're looking that deep into the details of your expenses than you've most likely put enough red flags on your return that it won't really matter what you think. You'll just need a really good adult beverage of your choosing to prepare to pay something. Hopefully not too much. IMHO Hire a good accountant or tax prep service or buy some tax software depending on your desire of your need for additional work. THEY (the IRS) only enforce the rules that collect revenue for the government. Vote for lower taxes and smaller government no matter which party. ha! Hope this is helpful Gerry Cousins, RPT Linux user too -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090408/f072aeef/attachment.html>
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