Taxes Made Simple

William (courier) asks:

Mike, I work as a sub-contractor courier. I use my own vehicle for the job. I know that to take the deduction for miles driven, I have to keep records of how many miles I drive. If I simply record on the invoice for each job the amount of miles I drove for it, will that be sufficient? Or will I have to keep a separate log—in a notebook for instance—to show how many miles I drove?

Answer:

Hi William. It sounds to me like your method should be sufficient. If you keep the invoices filed in an orderly manner, you’ll actually have more information regarding mileage than if you simply kept a daily log. You’ll have the amount of miles you drove on what date, for what job, and how much you got paid for it. And that information will be all in the same place. Sounds good enough to me.

That said, you’re going to have to tally it all up anyway at the end of the year for your taxes. So perhaps you’ll just want to periodically go through your invoices and enter each of the mileage amounts into an Excel file to get a running total. This will save you a lot of time next tax season.

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