You can claim the standard daily deduction of $52.00 per day (80% is actually the deductible amount for transportation workers) without ANY receipts. Your log book will serve as proof of your travels and days away from your tax home.

Now in the case of a carrier paying you .10 cpm "per diem" this could negate your tax deduction completely when you file in the Spring. It will tax some math to discover whether you were paid too much and owe taxes on the overage, were paid too little and can claim the variance as a tax deduction, or were paid the "correct amount."

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Adapting to an ever changing world.

basicly besides the company getting the benefit of reduced gross they pay on social security/unemployment/pension, tehy're complicating my taxes more ..... I think I got it ..... thanks

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Life is what you make of it .....

Excellent! You appear to be getting it!

Companies that offer these per diem plans are doing it for their benefit NOT the employees.

Reduced social security and medicare tax, disability insurance, workers comp, even unemployment benefits.

This does effectively reduce the employess gross taxable earnings but may also be a factor in qualifying for a mortgage and/or finance rates on other long term purchases.

The only upside I can see is in the event you are a deadbeat and are looking to lower your earnings in an attempt to have your child support lowered by a judge.

If I understand Social Security regs correctly each retiree's benefit is based on not only the lifetime contributions of that particular individual but is weighted based on the last 5 years contributions.

Perhaps one of our in house CPA's can get more detailed about this.

As a follow up question for our tax advisors on this site; "how does it work if a husband AND a wife both work and contribute to Social Security?" When they achieve retirement age do they each collect benefits based on their contributions or is the main wage earners benefit "split" between the 2?

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Adapting to an ever changing world.

And dont forget the A.T.M. receipts. If any of yall are like me, then you can accrue about $1000 a year, just in A.T.M. usage fees.

I am just tuning in on this subject, but am very interested. I was a company driver earlier this year and am now a proud O/O. This is of great interest to me and will read all of the posts. So please keep talking.

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The Candyman1970 can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good.

I'm with you Candyman. Just bought my truck this week and putting it on the road after the first of Dec. I'm gonna need a lot of help figureing this tax stuff out. I just spent my morning reading this entire thread.

As of October 2009 the per diem for transportation workers goes to $59.00 per day. Of course we are only allowed to write of 80% of that figure on our taxes.

As for tabulating days off there are a couple of different methods you may use. Just remember whichever method you do use be "consistent."

Method 1; Divide each day into quarters and then only claim the time you were on the road "away from your tax home."

Method 2; Partial days may be counted as 75% of a day regardless of how many actual hours you were on the job.

Method 3; Each partial day may be counted as a whole day. This latest version is a fairly new interpretation of the IRS regs and has been proposed by some radio personalities in the past year.

It is important to note that you are only allowed to claim the per diem deduction if you take a rest period AWAY from your tax home before returning. I read this to mean a legitimate 10 hour break as required by the DOT HOS rules.

This means local drivers cannot claim this nor can line haul drivers that return to their home base each night (sorry guys).

On a side note; Be sure you use a tax preparer that understands truck driver returns. Big box stores may not have the best qualified individual preparing your taxes so be careful.

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Adapting to an ever changing world.

H and R has done mine the last couple of years while I was a company driver, and the year before that I had someone else do it that was a trial run which as a huge mistakes and I had to refile.
This year with my circumstances as they are, I am going to talk to a couple of guys I know who live close by who are truckers and see if I can get a name out of them for who to go to. Word of mouth is usually a good place to start.