Opinions

[Black Bart]

With regard to the questions on the back of the 4562: "Do you have evidence to support the business/investment use claimed?" and then "If yes, is the evidence written?" Does anybody know for sure what they mean by "written evidence?" I'm taking that to mean a log, which they want you to keep and which very few people outside of traveling salesmen actually do keep.

Or, do you think it simply means gas tickets and cancelled checks? Or something else. Ideas?

[Snaggletooth]

Proof of Mileage

My success in getting clients to keep mileage logs is quite poor, and I'll bet that is the situation with most of you, if you would assess your own track record. Most of mine come to the appointment with no log.

At the appointment (which costs the customer my usual hourly rate) we spend a lot of time reconstructing mileage. If he is a baseball coach, we write down the places where his team spends his "away" games, scrimmage games, and even practices which are regularly called after school. If he is a contractor, we go through his bills and time sheets at all of his customers. Whatever the case, we painstakingly construct a mileage "log" after the fact.

Defending the amounts taken for mileage is reduced to proving he was at the venue in question. An auditor once took me to task on the baseball coach until he found out I was going to prove the coach was actually at these games -- this was actually quite easy to do, but was going to take some time. The auditor knew he had a loser, and was only going to prolong the audit, so he backed off, received a check for $125 for his other findings, and went home.

So when the question is asked, "Is the evidence written?" I answer YES, and keep the written reconstruction of the mileage. Occasionally I deduct mileage in cases where I believe the mileage was real, but we can't reconstruct a log. In those cases I answer NO.