Tax Tidbits: Presented by Wayne M. Davies of
www.YouSaveOnTaxes.com.
Short but sweet nuggets for the Small Biz Owner and/or
Self-Employed Person, each morsel serving up a specific tax
reduction strategy guaranteed to tickle your monetary taste-buds.
The U.S. Tax Code is so big, there's only one way to digest it:
one little nibble at a time.
Just like a piece of candy, one small bite of tax knowledge can
give you one very delicious deduction!
For most folks, commuting mileage is a non-deductible expense --
unless you know the little tax trick I'm about to reveal.
The non-deductibility of commuter miles is painfully true for
the employee who fights rush hour traffic every day, twice a
day, for 5 to 10 hours a week.
All that hassle, and what does he have to show for it? Just gas
money down the drain, not to mention the wear and tear on both
his vehicle and his stress-o-meter.
You can deduct virtually all your mileage, including the miles
you log from your home to the office or other place of business,
if you meet the following two criteria:
1. You are a small business owner or self-employed person, and
2. You have two offices or work locations: one outside the home
(Office #1) and one inside the home (Office #2).
Having two offices is very common for today's self-employed
professional. The store owner, the shopkeeper, the salesman, the
plumber, the consultant -- all these folks are typically
self-employed and have two offices: one where they meet with the
public (Office #1), the other at home, where they get their
paperwork done (Office #2).
Here's how it works:
Every day you get up and "go to work." But you don't get in the
car and drive to Office #1 right away. If you did that, even as
a self-employed person, you would be racking up non-deductible
commuting miles, just like the employee.
Instead, you grab a cup of coffee and head to Office #2 first,
which takes all of 30 seconds.
After working in Office #2 for awhile, then you hop in the car
and head to Office #1, where you work for the bulk of the day.
Then, when you're done at Office #1, you get back in the car and
go "home" -- except when you get inside your house, you don't
head for the living room, you go straight to Office #2, where
you finish up your daily routine with a few final minutes of
paperwork.
What have you just done?
You daily round-trip "commute" is now a business deduction, due
to a simple tax loophole that says:
Any miles driven between two business locations are deductible
business miles.
The fact that one of those two locations just happens to be your
Home Office is fine and dandy with the IRS.
By following this route each day, you can save hundreds, even
thousands of dollars in taxes.
The proof is in the pudding: Your round-trip "commute" is 20
miles per day. 20 miles X 5 days = 100 miles per week. 100 miles
per week X 50 weeks = 5,000 miles per year. 5,000 business miles
X .36 cents = $1,800 deduction
So, you just got yourself a nice $1,800 deduction -- a deduction
that you've probably been entitled to for years but didn't know
it.
$1,800 deduction X 32% income tax rate = $576 in actual tax
savings (27% federal income tax + 5% state income tax)
Five-hundred and seventy-six bucks. . . every year. . .
. . . Hmm, mmm, good! Now that's a tasty little morsel!
About the author:
Wayne M. Davies is author of the new eBook, "The Tax Reduction
Toolkit: 29 Little-Known Legal Loopholes That Will Reduce Your
Taxes By Thousands (For Small Business Owners and Self-Employed
People Only!) Don't file another tax return until you visit:
http://www.YouSaveOnTaxes.com/toolkit.html
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