Thursday, June 23, 2011

THIS JUST IN!

Here we go again.

The IRS has announced that the Standard Mileage Allowance is going up by 4.5 cents per mile effective for miles driven from July 1 through December 31.

The Standard Mileage Allowance for business use of your car will be 51 cents per mile for mileage driven from January 1st through June 30th, and 55.5 cents per mile for mileage from July 1st through December 31st.

The Standard Mileage Allowance for Medical and Moving travel is 19 cents per mile for January 1st through June 30th, and increases to 23.5 cents per mile for July 1st through December 31st.

The Standard Mileage Allowance for Charitable driving remains at 14 cents per mile. This rate is determined by the idiots in Congress, and has not been increased in a dog’s age.

That means that my 1040 clients will have to keep track of medical and business miles separately for January through June and for July through December. This mid-year increase happened once before, for calendar year 2008.

Actually a few of my clients still give me mileage broken down by Jan-June and July-December. Some clients have the memory of an elephant, asking if I can still use Income Averaging. Sewer “taxes” were deductible as real estate tax for one year only way back in the late 70s or early 80s (it is so long ago that I forget when), and every year one or two clients will still include their sewer bills with their tax “stuff”.

The good news is that I will be getting increased expense checks each month beginning in July.

As usual the IRS is behind the market, as someone just commented to me today that gas prices should begin to drop any day now.

No comments: