Newbie Needs Help With Milage!

Specialties Home Health

Published

Specializes in Home Health, Med/Surg.

I am a new Homecare RN, and I do visits daily - and I track my milage by the odometer...however there has been great debate on a few issues. If anyone could shed some light I'd appriciate it. ..

1. If I occasionally use my other vehicle - do I need to track that separately?

2. I heard that the IRS requires that you have atleast $10,700 in deductions to claim milage. Is this true - I've been on the IRS.gov site and can not find any thing to specifically answer this question. I currently do not own my home so I know I don't have that many deductions.

3. Do I need to track this by odometer milage or can I just write my milage for the day. Some of our nurses just write thier milage in thier day planner for the day and add it up at the end of the year....What's a newbie to do!

After hearing the $10,700 thing I started to panic because I'm traveling almost 200 miles a week, sometimes more! I will be bummed if I can't claim that!!!

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You have to have more itemized deductions than your standard deductions would amount to. I am in the same boat, I have no mortgage interest to deduct so I can never meet that. I get really tired of hearing "you can deduct it from your taxes". Not everybody can...

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Specializes in Home Health, Med/Surg.

Yes I am coming to learn the same! I finally found the info on the IRS website. It doesn't look like I need to track my milage at all...It wont do any good anyway :(

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Specializes in Home Health, MS, Oncology, Case Manageme.

I have the same problem because my husband and I file jointly. His income counts.

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Specializes in Home Health, Med/Surg.

stinks!

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Specializes in COS-C, Risk Management.

Keep track of it anyway, you never know what might happen to put you in a situation where you'll itemize. Or when you might find yourself in a situation where your employer owes you back wages/mileage (it actually happened to me once!).

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Home Health.

I got reimbursed for mileage (when I used my own vehicle) so I had to keep track of it for that. Now I use a company car and I only have to track it for their records. But I couldnt claim any on my taxes because I was receiving mileage reimbursement. I do however itemize because I always have more than 10,700 to itemize.

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It is best to keep track using odometer readings. You can make a note to indicate different cars.

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