I was just wondering if someone could tell me what all I need to gather up for tax preperation. Will they need log books? I always do our taxes but there is no way I am going to try to attempt to do it now since I don't know all the deductions he can take.

 

Yes, you will need his logbooks. You will need them for the entire year, so that if you take the "per diem" allowance that the IRS gives to persons under the HOS rules...the logs provide the basis for the deduction. No logs, if audited... "big whoops".

You will also need receipts for everything and anything that he has purchased for use on the truck and that includes "EVERYTHING"!

You will be surprised what is actually deductible. But you must fill out the longform and do the schedules.

Rather than go into a long winded explanation, I will tell you that if you have the time to do some homework, and research...you can do your taxes with the aid of either H&R Block's program or Turbo Tax. But before you do anything on paper...you need to find out what is and is not deductible.

Keep in mind that if your husband received "per diem" as a part of his pay, then that has to be considered differently than the "per diem allowance" on paper given by the IRS.

Tell your husband to look in truckstops for publications....the same ones with all the job adds....and see if any of them have any "tax articles" in them. Usually this time of year lots of them have those articles in them and they are written by reputable accountants who know the industry.

There was a fellow by the name of Russell Fullingim.. I think I spelled it right that posted over in the forums on truck.net who was a true giver of information...in addition to doing truckers taxes. See if he is still around and see what he has to say. Probably would go a long way to answering your questions and reducing your stress.

BTW...both of those tax programs also have "state income tax" modules available if you live in a state that shylocks you.

 

What I do with my logs for taxes is I place a number in one of the corners of the logbook cover for the number of days I was gone from home for that month. Makes it way easier at the end of the year to tote up the total number of days for the year. BOL

 

Thanks for the info. I am sure that I didn't save some of the receipts that would of been deductable. ops:

 

Best thing I did was put an envelope in the truck (somewhere near the driver) and put every receipt in it. Then when he gets in transfer the receipts from the envelope to your filing system.

Second thing I did was separate my logs by months and total the numbers of days out for each month.

One other thing I did was create a spreadsheet where I entered the different expenses. This could also be done by many of the free simply accounting programs on the web.

Then when tax time comes around all you have to do is print-out the results and hand it to your tax person.

kc0iv