As a former business owner owner, I realize that taxes can be a very important consideration when it comes to your earnings. So as an apiring (now in school) OTR company driver, what do you legitimately claim? I've seen a few posts that claim anything from CB radios, Air Card fees, Satellite radio fees, meals on the road, and more. Any advice on this? I've also seen suggestions about truck driver accountants. Any recommendations for the NC area?

You can deduct anything you use for your job, all clothing, bedding, polish, maintenence, you name it, deduct it. Any questions? Deduct them too.

Ditto. If you need it to do the job, it is a deduction. Heck, even something as simple as buying pizza for the shop that did a great job in servicing your truck is a deduction! By the way, I tend to do this once in a while and keep the techs I use happy and quick to get me in and do good quality work. Kinda like tipping a good waitress and therefore getting great service at a restaurant you frequent regularly.

As a former business owner, you will find things are pretty much the same. Keep good, accurate records. I keep multi layered spreadsheets on everything I do. I scan all my receipts into PDF's on my computer and enter each item in the spreads as soon as I do it. There are many preparers that can get the job done after that, but you will save a lot by just keeping the records accurate yourself. If you keep good spreads on what you are doing, you will not need to "dump" a bunch of receipts into a preparer's lap. No matter how good they are, there is a risk they will miss something doing it that way.

If you keep great records, you can even use something like Turbo Tax online to do the returns. I have used this method for several years with good results and no audits.... both as a company driver and as an O/O. You might want a preparer for the first year to cover all the bases, but once you get moving at this game, you should be able to take care of most of it yourself as you will be aware of what to look for.

Yep, what everyone else says. You buy a laptop, right it off. A dvd player, right it off. A dvd, right it off. Toilet paper, right it off! Anything you can think of out here is a potential right off. As long as it can fit in your truck. I even right off my household DirecTV, because I have a sat dish on the truck.

It gets even better when you own your own truck, then parts of the house are a right off too, along with utilities. A good accountant will help you along, and is strongly recommended.

Mike

Wrong , wrong , wrong . Clothing is only deductible if it is suitable for work , like uniforms with logos . Anything like cell phones used for both personal and business use cannot be deducted 100% for business . It's really best to have a qualified tax professional determine deductions .
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As an individual determined to help the little people in this world file their taxes w/ little or no risk of audit. I have a litte insight.

Cell Phones- Keep your monthly itemized statements. Then you have to add up the talk time for each "business call" made and see what % of your monthly bill that comes to. My advice is it usually is not enough to deduct vs the hassle of the record keeping. I have had people that get 2 cell phones. ON a family share plan and use one only for buisness calls. Makes record keeping a lot easier. B/c you will get a break down per phone # each month.

Clothing- you can only deduct the price of uniforms and maintentance of said uniforms.

Tools- You can deduct 100% if they are REQUIRED to stay employed. Not if you buy them on your own to make your job easier. They must be required by your employer.

Anything you buy to keep in your berth on a permanant basis is 100% deductible. ie. CB, Frig, TV, DVD, Maps, manual log books, Bedding everything else falls under your per diem deductions. Per diem is food and toiletries. If anyone has any specific questions that hasn't already filed I will be more than happy to guide you free of charge. I am just a wife of a truck (his a newbie) trying to be citzen in these tough times of our nation. My husband did auto paint and body for over 20 yrs as a independant contractor. So legal deductions are my thing. If I don't know the answer I know people that do and will find out and get back to you asap!

I have a few questions..can you deduct any part of your home phone bill if most of it is used in your business..all of our long distance portion is used for trucking and at least half of the internet bill.Also is any of our loan payment for the truck we bought in March 08' tax deductible,we also borrowed money to purchase a $9300.00 APU and is that a deduction as well? we also did'nt recieve a 1099 from several companies we hauled freight for,what do we do there?And when we first started this business we hauled several loads for this guy that still owes us $7800.00 we did'nt have a signed contract but my husbands name is signed on the bills of lading..can we list that as a business loss even tho we don't have the guys EIN #.Sorry I asked so many questions and I wish I had known about this site back in February,because we would never have bought this rolling headache..

You really need to get a tax professional to help you . There is probably more you didn't even think to ask . Google enrolled agent and find one near you . Enrolled agents are tested and certified by the IRS so you know they are ethical and knowledgeable .

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