What’s Your Situation?
Whether you ’ ra looking for a freelance mileage tax write-off, you ’ rhenium Reimbursing your Employees for their business Miles, or you ’ re a small commercial enterprise owner, you need to create a vehicle mileage log for Business Tax Return. There are easier and more difficult ways to them, but first, let ’ s see the basic differences between the purposes of trips :
Business vs. Personal Use: What’s business mileage?
Business Use Purposes:
- Business Meeting / Conference
- Driving to a Client
- Business Lunch with a Client
- Going to the post office, bank or Home Depot for work supplies
- Medical purposes
- Running business-related errands
Personal Use Purposes:
- Commuting between home and the Company’s Headquarters
- Doing personal shopping
- Going to a family event
- Driving to the cinema/theatre
- Gym or other sport purposes
It ’ mho full of life to know that you need to track both purposes in your mileage log, so you get the proportion of business and personal trips.
Don ’ thymine run into trouble by claiming 100 % business habit of a vehicle at any monetary value. Using MileageWise ’ s AI-based AdWise feature, you can well set the ratio of business and personal trips, so you get the best recommendations of disregarded trips retrospectively, auto-populated to fill in the gaps for your 100 % IRS-Proof Mileage Log. 
Mileage Log Step By Step
1. Standard Mileage Rate or Actual Expense Method?
Taxpayers can select a method acting of calculation. Keep in mind that you can not change the method acting in the same year .
- Standard Mileage Deduction: This is the easier way, as you only need to track the number of miles you drive in a year for business purposes, then you multiply it by IRS’s Standard Mileage Rate, which is 57.5 cents in Tax Year 2020. Based on the average business miles claimed on taxes, it can add up to 12,000 per tax year. Be aware that by choosing this option, you won’t be able to deduct any operational expenses on the car (maintenance, fuel, insurance, etc.).
- Actual Expense Method: If you feel like you can’t get the most out of standard mileage rate, you can still go with the Actual Expense Method. Although this way gives you the chance to deduct all your car expenses depending on the ratio of your business miles, it takes more time to collect all of the receipts for your repairs, registration fees, refuelings, lease payments, garage rent, depreciation, licenses, insurance, tires, tolls, and parking fees. You must choose this option if you have 5 or more cars. Remember that if you choose this method, you also have to keep copies of all the relevant documentation, such as receipts or bills.
2. Set Your Odometer Readings at Start and End of Tax Year
Are you having troubles recollecting your past odometer readings ? Using MileageWise, you can easily calculate them by using our past Odometer Reading Calculator. If you know your very inaugural and your stream odometer readings and the actual fuel pulmonary tuberculosis of your vehicle, you ’ re good to go .
3. Pen and paper vs. Mileage Tracker App and Web Dashboard
There are several ways to keep track of your business miles : You can create a mileage log on paper, on Google / Excel Sheet, a printable mileage Log Template or you can use a mileage Tracker App on your earphone – sometimes accompanied by a Web Dashboard. however, backtracking your business miles to reconstruct your mileage log on paper, specially retrospectively can be extremely difficult. There are countless fixed data and circumstances you have to keep in beware and put into your mileage log very precisely. It is a brassy solution, but at the end of the day you will surely ask yourself : Is it worth it ?
even mileage trackers with GPS engineering are inexact sometimes, because the can only track real-time drive, they can not be used for reconstructing or creating logs retrospectively .
How to recover my past miles retrospectively?
MileageWise can make up for disregarded mileage logs. With the AdWise feature of speech and by checking and correcting 70 legitimate conflicts your commend logs will be well-built and IRS-proof, meet every anticipation. Having your by mileage log reconstructed, you can continue tracking your trips with MileageWise manually. Try MileageWise
Watch our video about past mileage reconstruction:
Can I track mileage on the go?
absolutely. MileageWise ’ s Mileage Tracking App has Automatic Tracking based on Real-life drivers ’ needs, experiences, and feedbacks. furthermore, it has no unnecessary features, so your trips will be detected mechanically without using up your Data and Battery. We value privacy : MileageWise App tracks you accurately, while not monitoring your movement constantly, alone at the point of your arrival.
On a tight deadline? Outsource the undertaking of keeping your mileage log to us !
