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Posted by pleasedontemailme on June 18, 2007, 9:27 am
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> I work for a small (<25 people) computer consulting company
> doing technical consulting on-site at customer locations all
> over the metropolitan area. We have an office in an
> out-of-the-way Northwestern suburb of the Twin Cities that
> neither I nor any of the other engineers have an office
> presence at, other than a plastic mail slot which is usually
> empty since expense checks and paystubs are mailed to my
> home.
>
> I make about 8-10 trips per year to the office for meetings,
> paperwork or to pick up a package that wasn't shipped
> properly to the client location, but other than that do not
> travel to this office since there's quite literally nowhere
> for me to work, it's 25 miles from my house and its not "on
> the way" to anywhere.
>
> Our management recently said that trips "passing by" the
> office need to be logged as if they went to/from the office
> "as per IRS regulations" (their claim, not mine).
>
> I have a 2-3 clients that are 10-15 miles past the office
> (making them 40 miles from my house) and I questioned the
> fairness of asking me to eat 70% of the mileage of visiting
> these clients as well as the logic of "passing by", since I
> would have to leave the freeway and travel 2-3 miles to
> actually drive "past" our office.
>
> I was told that this "was the IRS rule per the accountant"
> but I can't find any clear, layman's description of how
> mileage is supposed to be accounted for per the IRS. I know
> that regular commutes are not considered business expenses,
> but is there something so vague that "driving past" counts
> as a commute?
>
> I know that paying mileage has both a tax component as well
> as a "what an employer wants to pay" component, and I
> suspect that I am being snowed and that this is really about
> them shaving money off the $3k+ or so per month they have to
> pay in mileage.
I think the key question here is what, exactly, is the
location of your "regular or main job". It sounds like it
may be your home rather than the head office.
The IRS has a summary of the rules regarding employees'
deductible transportation expenses at
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p463/11081l02.gif-3292619966.html
that may be helpful to you. The same information can be
found in Publication 17.
Based on the facts and circumstances as you present them, it
seems like travel from your home office to a client location
would be entirely deductible. To the extent your employer
does not reimburse these expenses, you may want to consider
deducting them as unreimbursed employee expenses on Schedule
A of your Form 1040 as a miscellaneous expense.
-Crystal
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