How To Deduct Travel Miles In Your Taxes, Better Start Tracking Now

Over the months to come, we will be bringing you tax and accounting tips from CS and Company that we hope will be helpful in your business and personal life. Feel free to let us know topics you would like to know more about. We will try to keep it current, interesting and informative. Upcoming topics include costs savings of hiring a tax professional to prepare your taxes, deducting mileage, stashing tax free income away and changes in payroll taxes. Hope you’ll join me and utilize my tips!

One area that always seems to be of interest to taxpayers is whether or not you can deduct mileage expenses. Yes and no is the answer. If you are reimbursed by your employer for the mileage then you cannot deduct. If you are partially or not reimbursed at all then you possibly can deduct mileage. However, you cannot deduct commuting to or from your place of work. It has to be actual travel, leaving from your place of work, traveling to another location, working and then traveling back. Then, in order to claim the deduction, you need to keep a mileage log of your miles traveled for work and for personal use. Now you can deduct the miles traveled for your job. The current mileage rate is .51 cents per mile. There is talk that this rate will increase for the summer due to rising gas prices.