Mileage

I put nearly 25,000 miles on my car in the last year for work...and received $2,100 in milage (a monthly check).

Yup...11 cents a mile.

Where's that tax long form sheet?

 

About two months ago we got a boost from .28 to .34. Fortunately our newsroom superiors go to bat for us concerning mileage, periodically checking with the corporate mothership to see if they can get us even a tiny boost.

 

I used to write off the difference, but, yeah, it's tricky. As I understand it, you have to itemize, so that you can claim "unreimbursed work expenses." Then, you can only actually write off those unreimbursed work expenses that exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income. So, if you make $30,000, and you have $650 in unreimbursed work expenses, you only get a $50 deduction.

The key is padding those unreimbursed work expenses as much as possible. Union dues, job-seeking expenses, professional memberships all count. I used to write off my subscription to the New York Times, b/c I used their website at work (this was when TimesSelect was going), and, when I was looking for a job, I'd write off the 400 miles to go visit my folks for the weekend if I could finagle a cup of coffee at a local paper or something. Wound up knocking like $1,500 off my AGI one year. So I guess that saved me a few hundred in taxes.

Long story short, if they're telling you you can just write off the mileage they don't pay you, tell them that's horseshit. It's a little more complicated than that.

 

I want to sympathize. I really do.

But as a desk person who happens to live 21 miles from the office, I put almost 10,000 miles on my car every year "for work" . . . and get $0.

 

I drive 80 miles round trip to work, and my job pays 41 cents a mile. Guess how much of my commute is covered? Zero. Welcome to the club

 

We were at .25, when it hit 3 bucks a gallon we got bumped to .28 and when it hit 4 we got .33. A whooping 5 cents for a dollar jump in gas.

 

It is nice, if not surprising, to see at least a few shops upping mileage. But I wonder how many in the last year have done so.

 

My shop ups mileage because we're union. It's in the contract (smart negotiators a few years ago). Good luck elsewhere. A couple of papers ago, they paid 22 cents a mile, and only reluctantly went up to 25, then back to 22 when gas went up and down. This was when gas was breaking $2.50 a gallon.

 

My shop has upped the mileage rate every month or two for the past year. We're at .39 right now, which I guess isn't too terrible. But I have a bunch of long road trips ahead of me this fall and I will be writing off the difference.

 

I drive about 50 miles round trip nearly each day...I didn't include that in those 25,000 miles for work...I put 37,000 miles on my car this past year total. That make more sense desk-jockey?

Like I would bitch about where I live and try to make my shop pay for it.

 

We just went up to 58.5 per mile

 

My paper's publisher always is sure to point out we can write off the difference for our mileage. We get 20 cents per mile, and I think I put about 10,000 miles per year on my car going to games. I do write off the rest of it, and I've never really figured out the difference, but I doubt it makes a $20 difference on my taxes. And as some were saying before, if you do not have enough deductions to itemize, you take the standard deduction and get do additional government benefit. Basically, the only way to get more for your mileage is if your employer actually will pay it.