Discover How You Can Get The IRS To Pay You For Driving

After raising the mileage reimbursement rate 2 cents from 2007 to 2008, the IRS raised it again beginning July 1st. This time they raised it a whopping 8 cents per mile.

For business miles driven January 1 - June 30, 2008 the rate is 50.5 cents per mile. For business miles driven July 1 - December 31, 2008 the rate is 58.5 cents per mile.

That means that if you drive for business but do not get reimbursed for it by your company, the IRS could pick up your cost of driving at tax time. Depending on the amount or type of driving you do, you could be eligible for thousands of dollars in mileage reimbursements! Let's see how this would work out for you in two different examples.

In the first example let's say that you are a real estate agent, working full time in a suburban area. It wouldn't be uncommon for you to drive more than 10,000 miles in a year for business. In fact that might be on the very low side. Assume those miles were spread out evenly over the year and you could be looking at a $5,450 reimbursement. You could be...if you record your miles the way the IRS wants them.

Now let's say you're out of work and looking for a job for a few months. You too can claim the miles you drove going to and from job interviews. At 58.5 cents a mile, it pays to record even those shorter local trips. Even if you only drove 500 miles before you found a new job, that would be a reimbursement figure of $272.50 if...you guessed it...if you recorded everything the way the IRS wants it.

If you do get reimbursed by your company for your miles, you already know that most companies use the IRS mileage rate to determine how much they pay though they may want to check to see if they have raised the rate yet.

If they haven't your next step should be to talk with your tax advisor. Ask them if you would be better off waiting and claiming the IRS mileage allowance on your taxes rather than submit an expense report to your company for mileage reimbursement.

There's a third type of driver who also needs to know this information. That's someone who drives for a charity or for medical reasons. If you know anyone, for example, who drives an elderly parent to dialysis treatments on a daily basis, or delivers food to shut ins through the Meals on Wheels program, they too are eligible for IRS mileage allowances (though at different rates).

In all of these cases though, you need to be careful how you set things up to avoid an IRS audit.

Since gas prices started going through the roof, something strange has begun to happen at tax time. While more people want to claim the mileage reimbursement, and may in fact be entitled to it, they don't do it. Or they under report their mileage and cost themselves hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Why do they do this? Two words: IRS audits. It used to be that if you sat down on April 14 and went through what trip receipts you had and guesstimated your mileage, then remembered four other trips you didn't have receipts for but guesstimated numbers for those too and added that all up to get a number, you would be ok. Those numbers just didn't add up to a lot unless you were being audited for another reason. Today it's a different story.

"You cannot deduct amounts that you approximate or estimate," says the official IRS publication on this (IRS publication463 - How To Prove Expenses). It goes on to say,"If you prepare a record in a computer memory device with the aid of a logging program, it is considered an adequate record."

You can certainly record your mileage record by hand, but you no longer need to give it a second thought. If you want to though, make sure your log includes the destination, miles traveled and business purpose for the trip.

Now here's the information you need to pass on to anyone you know that fits the examples we've been talking about. Tell them there is a completely automated way to create this log for the IRS or for your company. It's 100%, plug it in and forget about, automated. But you also have as much manual control over it as you like.

One the company side of the coin, anyone managing a fleet of cars or trucks knows that gas prices are one of the biggest expenses they have to manage. Just by plugging this logger into the cigarette lighter adapter, you can watch and manage everything that happens in your fleet. You know where each vehicle is at all times. You can help educate employees on how to save gas on their trips, or dispatch trucks more efficiently based on current locations.

This GPS monitoring solution can cut down on materials shrinkage, driver "bad" habits, engine idling, liability insurance costs and most of all misuse of company vehicles. You'd be surprised how fast your employees will straighten their ways as soon as they know you're watching them.

No one wants to say that everyone is going to take advantage of business mileage reimbursement programs either. But this device makes it easier for everyone to stay honest and still get paid what they deserve. It's not only an automatic recorded. You can turn the device off and on.

That means that the employee who makes several stops on the way back to the office from a sales call to run personal errands can turn the logger off while he does that to exclude those miles from his trip log. That way there's no questions from accounting that could lead to unnecessary problems for both of you.

The Mileage Logger can also be used to track the trips each driver in your vehicle takes. This GPS teen tracking is a way of knowing where your car is at all times.

In an emergency, a broken curfew, or just as a check to make sure your teen really is where he/she said they would be, you can add a $1 per month service that locates your vehicle in real time. Of course, you can always go online to your secured account to view the trip information that was automatically uploaded when the car was turned off.

Again, I;m not trying to say you should spy on your teen, but as a single parent of teen drivers, I like this. I hope I never need to use it, but it's nice to know I can save myself hours of pacing the floors at night wondering why my daughter isn't home only to discover I didn't get her text message and she's safe and sound at a friend's house.

You can read dozens of testimonials, get the detailed specs. on the device and buy the Mileage Logger here.

I also recommend this site Gas Mileage Calculators for information on the Mileage Logger, another gas calculator that will instantly show you your mileage and many online and free gas and trip calculators.