@1forum1 wrote:
I asked the original question... mileage one way or round trip, and now I am more confused. Let me ask another question. This is my plan. I will use Mapquest to give me my round trip total and use that. I do not intend claim a home office. Is this OK?
It's all business mileage. So that's probably round trip but might be less if you do other things along the way. think of it in terms or trip legs with a leg being any travel from point A to point B. If a leg takes you to or from a MS task that leg is deductible.
Examples:
Home to first MS task is deductible.
home to gas station is deductible (you need gas to complete your business purposes)
MS task to next MS task is deductible
MS task to lunch is deductible IF you're away from home and will continue working after lunch.
Last MS task of the day to home is deductible. If you go somewhere other than home, that's deductible but additional legs after that are not. So for example you stop at grocery store on the way home. The leg from your last MS task to the grocery store is deductible but the leg from the grocery store to home is not.
Rule of thumb is that any leg that touches an MS task at one or both ends is probably deductible.
Also I think the requirement is that you log actual miles driven, not a representative route that may or may not match what you actually did. You need an odometer reading at start and finish. Write down your start of year odometer reading. Then each day that you do MS stuff, write down your odometer when you start driving on MS stuff. Write down the odometer again when you stop doing MS stuff for the day Subtract start of day from end of day and record that number as your daily business mileage along with notes about where you went and the business purpose served by it. Tally all of your daily numbers. This is your year's business mileage.
At the end of the year, write down you odometer reading again. Then subtract your start of year odometer reading from your end of year odometer reading. This is your total miles for the year. Subtract your business miles from your total miles and you get your personal miles. This year's end of year odometer reading is next year's starting odometer reading.
There are automated ways to get this using devices like the Automatic plugin and app. With that, you just click on the trips that are business and it keeps all the records for you.
Some methods require all of the vehicle expenses and some require just the business and personal mileage figures. Your accountant can tell you whether you should track all expenses and deduct the percentage of business use or just use standard mileage rates. Typically the former if the majority of miles are business, and the later if it is more of a mixture. Unless you're using the vehicle more or less exclusively for business the mileage method is probably the better fit.