Tracking business, charitable, medical, and moving mileage on a per drive basis accurately is a tedious task for taxpayers and employees that are reimbursed for their business miles. Traditionally, this is accomplished with a quick and dirty excel spreadsheet and Google maps, or not accomplished at all.
We are excited to promote the Mileage IQ app for Android, and iOS operating systems.

The app makes tracking mileage easy by running in the background and automatically tracking every mile driven then syncing them to the cloud where you can access from either the app itself or by going to www.mileiq.com to access it on your own personal file all stored in the cloud.  The app will take 5 minutes to calculate your drive. Then it will prompt you to classify it as either business, charitable, medical, or personal.  You can also take notes on the nature of the drive.  The following are the current 2015 rates:

• Business Miles: 57.5 cents a mile
• Medical or Moving Miles: 23 cents a mile
• Charitable Service Miles: 14 cents a mile

Many taxpayers miss out on a truly great tax deduction/expense reimbursement at 57.5 cents a business mile, which if you back out the cost of fuel, includes roughly 40 cents of depreciation and repairs on the vehicle alone.  If you drive on average 200 business miles a week, this equates to $5,800 in deductions/reimbursements a year.
A taxpayer has the option to use actual cost to maintain and use the vehicle (which must be adjusted for a business use percentage) or the standard mileage rate.  The standard mileage rate also allows for you to deduct parking fees and tolls as well, and Mile IQ has this feature already integrated.  Miles commuting to your tax home or place of business is not considered to be a business mile and must be excluded.
If audited, the IRS representative will request a drivers log to account for the business/charitable mileage taken on the tax return which is usually satisfied by the excel spreadsheet.  On Mile IQ’s website, you will have all of the data easily accessible and exportable to excel to meet your IRS documentation requirements.
If you have any questions regarding this, please do not hesitate to call 719-579-9090 to contact your BiggsKofford representative and we will be more than happy to help you.