[paradoxical3]

I understand that personal use of a company car is a taxable benefit to the person using the car, even if the car is vinyled with the company logo. In other words, if your company leases a Porsche and slaps a sticker on it, you still have to pay tax on your personal mileage.

However, if a company is involved in engineering automotive products that require extensive mileage on a car to road-test (waterproofing, vibration/UV resistance, etc), is it possible to claim a high percentage of the car (90%+) for business use?

Really, the sole purpose of the car would be to have a permanent test-bed/promotional show-piece for the company products. In reality, I would drive it on a daily basis simply because that is the fastest way to rack up testing mileage as opposed to simply driving back and forth across the US to rack up mileage.

I will ask my accountant later this week, but just curious if someone knows offhand.

[ShopVac]

I have a fleet of vehicles for my technicians...and typically, they really don't do the type of work that you are listing, but here's what I know.

If you travel to one specific office everyday (your work office), the mileage from your home to this office should be listed as personal miles.

Now, if you travel to different locations every day, typically that lists your home as your home office, and miles from your home to your starting point...and miles from your last job to home are not considered personal miles. Most of this is defined as what you list your personal office to be.

In either case, you do need to log your mileage (part of the crap you deal with having a company vehicle). In doing so, you would need to prove that you were working, or 'on the clock' at the time of your drive. If you physically punch in 8 to 5, Mon - Fri, it would be difficult to prove that you were 'working' on that Sunday afternoon drive. If you're salaried, this gets a bit more difficult. I would expect that you would need documents of some sort that you were working. I would think a 'technical' sheet showing your findings after your drive would suffice.

My wife has a masters in taxation...I can ask her if she deals with anything like this with her company fleet. If it's any different than what I have listed, I'll let you know.

In any case, I believe the tax aspects of your personal mileage (while it seems high paying all at once) is nowhere near the cost of ownership and maintaining a car yourself...especially if you get a gas card from your company as well. And not claiming any personal mileage may open yourself for an audit (which if fine, if you've got the documentation).

[Joekerr]

It is true that the miles to your home office (from home) are considered personal, and then from there, they are deductible. However, I'd really like to see more people challenge this as it seems unfair from a logical standpoint (even though it has been challenged before - in regards to what argument was presented I do not recall, but they did lose).

My thought is that in order to drive from home to your work office - why do you do that? Is it not to earn a salary that you can be taxed on? Does anyone think that they can simply work from home every day and retain their job? So then is not the travel to your home office for the purpose of earning income, which is being taxed and thus should be deductible? I don't know - I think their argument is that you choose where to live, so why should they pay if you choose to live further away - but I still think that's ridiculous - not everyone can afford to live 2 minutes away from work.

I think though (above aside), if you can prove that you may be called at any point in the day to use your car for work purposes (visiting clients, etc) and that this commonly happens, you may be able to make a case that the bringing your car to work (aside from say public transport) is a necessity for your job and thus the travel to and from home is required for work and deductible. You'll be on the edge, but I think its defensible.

[paradoxical3]

I actually do work from home (though, will probably move to an office with warehousing in a few months), so I'm not as concerned about the commuting miles. Really, I'm in a weird situation because:

1. I need to road-test my products for many miles
2. I need a dedicated vehicle to perform testing on (I'm not going to be constantly installing and removing prototypes on my personal car)
3. The vehicle needs to be exciting enough to enter into trade shows/cars and coffees/local car shows
4. It would be wasteful to drive exclusively for road testing. If I want to get 10,000 miles on a product, it's completely stupid to drive nowhere for 10k miles just to test, when I could rack up that same 10k miles doing actual daily trips in just a few month.

ShopVac is probably right in that either way costs will be lower even if I can't write off all of the mileage. Just wondering what I can realistically claim because technically, every time I drive the car is putting testing mileage on the units.

[1fastdoc]

Originally Posted by Joekerr

My thought is that in order to drive from home to your work office - why do you do that? Is it not to earn a salary that you can be taxed on? Does anyone think that they can simply work from home every day and retain their job? So then is not the travel to your home office for the purpose of earning income, which is being taxed and thus should be deductible? I don't know - I think their argument is that you choose where to live, so why should they pay if you choose to live further away - but I still think that's ridiculous - not everyone can afford to live 2 minutes away from work.

The purpose of taxes at the barest level is to pay for the gov't to function. While I'm all for keeping as much money as I can, we do have a civic responsibility to contribute to the funding (even if the gov't is blowing the money on stupid shit but that's a separate issue). If transportation is a requirement of the job, then it is deductible because it is not a personal expense.

In contrast, driving to work is completely personal. If you choose to live in suburbia to afford a nicer house, it shouldn't be the government's responsibility to foot the bill for your transportation. After all, the gov't isn't some magic bank, it's the tax dollars from you and your neighbors. Do you want to pay for your neighbor's gas for his 50 mile commute to work in his 12 mpg truck? I don't.

[Malibu1]

I pay my taxes for the 99% of the US population that does not. That is all I have to say about that.

[Maestro]

Here is another part of the question, do you own another car which is only use for personal things. If so you might be able to claim a high % of the miles on the company car for work only. However, from what I have read on this subject the IRS is cracking down on these kind of things, unless you have good mileage logs you are going to have a hard time justifying the higher than expect mileage.

If the only car you have is the company car then you going to be hard press to claim a high % of work only miles, the government may not buy the test car ideal, since the Auto company do this and lend a test car to employees who's sole job is to drive and test the car. It sounds like the car is a mobile advertising platform so it hard to claim it is for testing purposes only.

Generally speaking, the IRS could care less about certain things that people claim, but when people exceed a limit it flags you and they may or may not choose to look at your returns. If you put in 90% work related on your return this may flag you since that could be outside the norm, but they may just ignore your situation since no other flags maybe set off.

The best thing to do is consult a tax expert since some things are very easy to justify and others are not.

[1fastdoc]

This is why I have 4 cars.

The M3 is the "business" car, which is good because the thing is a gas hog.

[SLOWER]

This year I am tracking my miles for the first time. Going to see if it's worth the hassle. I'm using the MileBug app on iPhone.