tax deductions
 

Hi...I'm not a "brand new driver" but this will be my first year to file taxes for a whole year. I will need to know which form I need to deduct per diem as my company doesn't offer or deduct per diem. How much can I deduct for per diem? I read it was $52/ day at 75%...is this correct? What constitutes being able to deduct a day? What else can I deduct? Thanks for your help!

In short you can deduct anything that is work related that you have not been reimbursed for by your employer. Pens, rulers, calculators, gloves, boots, work clothes, cleaning supplies, and so on.

As far as what constitutes a "day away from home" that is any 24 consecutive hour period that you are away from your tax home.

An easy, but somewhat less accurate, way of doing this is to go through all your log books for the year and add up only those days where you have a full log page showing you away from home. This is less accurate because you will lose out on a handful of days if you had figured the actual 24 hour periods.

Which ever way you do it, write that number down on the front cover of your log. Makes it easy to go back an total up the entire year that way.

Unless you normally itemize your taxes, there is a fair chance that you may be better off simply taking the standard deduction, so be sure to find out what your standard deduction is and compare that to your total for itemized deductions.