While you all know you can deduct your mileage for mystery shopping, one thing people seem to always forget is that you can additionally deduct part of your vehicle license tax (not the registration, just the deductible tax part) and car loan interest on the Schedule C (the rest of the tax is deducted on Schedule A; the other loan interest is not deductible). This is done on a percentage basis. If you drove 15,000 miles for the year and 5,000 of those miles were for mystery shopping, 1/3 of the license tax and 1/3 of your loan interest is deductible *in addition to* the 56 cents a mile on your Schedule C, where it will help reduce the SE tax you have to pay.
In order to make that computation, your tax preparer will ask how many total miles you drove. Even if you don't know what your starting odometer was on Jan 1 of 2014, go write it down for today. You'll use that as the ending odo for 2014 and it will be the starting figure for your 2015 calculations.
If you didn't write down the 2014 figure, find an odometer reading from a service receipt near the first of the year. Let's say you got the oil changed on November 15, 2013 and the odometer was 55,025 miles. Today you look and it's 67,335 miles.
Subtract 55025 from 67335. The oil change was 13.5 months ago. Divide the result by 13.5. That's your average miles per month. Multiply that by 12. That's your approximate miles for the year. Subtract that from 67,335. That is your approximate starting mileage for Jan 1, 2014. Give those two figures to your tax preparer for your starting and ending mileage. By having the ending mileage in the tax return, if the same person does your return next year, the program will automatically fill in 67,355 as your starting mileage for 2015.
Time to build a bigger bridge.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2015 03:49PM by dspeakes.