Tax Reducers Organizer - Employee Business Expenses

If you have certain unreimbursed expenses related to your work as an employee, you may be able to take a portion of those expenses as an itemized deduction on your tax return. If you are in business for yourself, those expenses belong elsewhere.

Examples of Employee Business Expenses include:

Local Travel expenses

Overnight Travel expenses

Meals and Entertainment expenses

Conferences

Job Related Education expenses

Look over the following list and provide us with the pertinent information:

For each vehicle used for business purposes:

- Date vehicle was placed into service

- Total of all miles this vehicle was driven during the tax year

- How many of those miles were for business purposes?

- How many of those miles were commuting to/from your job?

- Do you (or your spouse) have a vehicle other than this one for personal use?

- If your employer provided this vehicle, is personal off-duty use permitted?

- Do you have evidence to support the business purpose of this expense?

- If so, is that evidence written?

We generally prefer to use the above information to calculate expenses based upon mileage, but if you have unusual situations such as an employer-provided leased vehicle or vehicles that you rented for local business use, then we can use the actual expenses method. In that case, we would need to know the following additional information for each vehicle:

- Gasoline, oil, repairs, vehicle insurance, etc.

- Vehicle rental cost

- Actual cost of employer-provided leased vehicle if 100% of annual lease value was included on your form W-2

Provide the amounts of any of the following expenses:

- Parking fees, tolls, taxi fares, and common-carrier transportation costs that did NOT involve overnight travel or commuting

- Travel expenses while away from home overnight, including lodging, air fare, car rental, taxi, etc. but excluding meals and entertainment.

- Meals and entertainment expenses including business purpose

- Business Gifts

- Education expense to make you better at your current job

- Home offices expenses

- Trade Publications

- Other business expenses NOT included above (e.g. conferences, seminars, etc.)

Tell us about any reimbursement amounts you received that were NOT reported on your W-2.