Saving Time with Technology, 1st with Mileage Tracker
As technology propels us forward into the future of business, we thought we would offer you a weekly post about how to use this technology to free up some of your time. Whether you are a St. Louis business owner, student, manager, or a team member, wouldn’t it be nice to have a few extra minutes each day, or a couple extra hours in a week? If you follow some of our tricks, you can look like a superhero at work and have more time to do what you love to do! (Oh and did we mention that some of these tricks will make the ‘T’ word easier!? That’s right, some of these can make taxes easier to file!)
Mileage Logs
Yes, the dirty little thing that takes hours and hours to compile. Believe us, we know! Our clients have put an average of 20,000 – 25,000 miles/year in business mileage meaning that there is $11,000 – $14,000 in tax deduction available to be claimed when using the optional standard mileage rates
At some point, a brilliant individual developed a mileage tracking app.
Now, there are many choices out there and your particular needs will determine which app you select. However, they all have one thing in common: if you download them to your phone and keep your phone with you, they track your miles for you. Typically you teach the phone locations and typical activities at each location. Eventually, the apps learn the purpose of most of the trips that you take, and offer suggestions for classifying them. Then all you need to do is review the app’s work; think of this as liking or disliking something on YouTube or Pandora.
Tax Notes: Did you know that miles driven to medical, charitable, and moving expense purposes are also deductible, which means they can decrease your tax liability? If you have never taken this deduction before because it is just to difficult and time consuming to capture, these apps make it easy. So not only can they save you hours of time logging, calculating, mapping and tallying your miles, but they can actually help maximize your tax benefits as well!
Happy Travels,
Chelsea Auton
The Volpe Consulting & Accounting Team
