If xm satellite is tax deductible, what about Spotify?

This is another area, if you are deducting 100% of your cell phone, you had better be able to prove that it is 100% for business, and that there are no personal calls made on it. In my case, they have gone line by line of my detailed Verizon statement checking and verifying business numbers. I was taking the total number of minutes x $.25 ($.25 is what Verizon used to charge if you went over your minutes) and claiming that, they have now reduced it to 17% of the total bill for the year. I have since been told that it should be "what percentage of total minutes is for business". Thus, if you used 100 minutes for the month, and 25 of that was for business, you can claim 25% for that month. Each month you have to do that, so if your bill was $100, and 25% of the time used was business, your deduction would be $25.00 for that month. Then add it all up for the year.

She has not given a specific reasoning for her numbers, however, from a discussion with the tax lawyer, he believes that she's basing it on the amount of time I was gone away from home, as compared to the distance travelled from home, and the otherwise availability of me being able to find out weather conditions. The lawyer was commenting that he has seen this one go every way under the sun, he's seen some go 100%, some go 50% and many go 0%, it depends on the auditor. This is another of the items I am challenging as to why we are going to tax court.

 

It sounds like you should have gone into that audit with an enrolled agent at your side. I know the fees would have been high, but you are just as vulnerable as someone who goes into a court of law representing himself.

 

The IRS is spending dollars to pick up nickels from middle class tax payers when there are multi-billion dollar corporations out there shielding trillions from the IRS

 

I'm still in the audit. because it's under $10,000 (amount owed), and the estimated amount to defend is around $5,500, even ATBS that's based locally and advertises via OOIDA and SXM, don't want to waste their time. I've been told by several Atty., EA's, etc., that it would be a waste of their time and my money, and that I should just pay it and move on.

 

Good grief! What a shame! I agree that the Gov't is spending dollars to pick up nickles (at best) too. I personally believe that this is for a reason and they are trying to crush the middle class in order to drop us all down to the lower class. Of course this is just my two cents (that I am always trying to hold on to, LOL!).

 

No, XM is not deductible

 

So, my audit was finished as of April 6th(waiting for the paperwork to file so I find out what my revised amount owed is), spent about 2 hours with the Appeals examiner. It's amazing what a face to face sit down will accomplish when other do everything over the phone or by mail. A few things I learned, it helps to be prepared on your own, research, research, research. Print out relevant IRS pubs that work either for you or against you, it's amazing what IRS people don't know. If you don't like what the examiner offers you, file an appeal, it appears lately they are ignoring the appeals process and making you file the $60 for Tax Court, and then you get a letter from appeals. All appeals are face to face.

Depending on the examiner, they all look at the per day, per diem amount differently. In my case, she ruled that the day I left home (as long as I spent that night in the truck/hotel, away from home) was a full day. The original examiner reduced my "FULL DAY" deduction from 200 to 50, and changed my partial days to 210 from 60. This caused a huge drop in my deduction. The appeals examiner, reversed this. She went page by page for 6 months, and then doubled the numbers (as long as it was less than 365). In the month of January, the original examiner said I was gone only 4 full days, and 20 partial days. The appeals examiner changed this to 6 partial days and 18 full days.

One of my problems was that I had lost all my receipts, they had been stored digitally and were lost in a virus attack. When we went over line by line on my itemized 2106 deductions, in the end she let me keep all of them as reasonable and appropriate and needed. HOWEVER, she looked at the Sirius bill, and the comment from the original examiner. She agreed that 20% of the bill was appropriate. The math was convoluted, and my mind is still rolling around at the computation. But, it's based on the amount of time away from home, the amount of hours per day I listened to the radio, and amount of reasonable and logical time that I would have gleaned information from it that would help me.

AS a company driver, showers which you pay cash for are deductible. It falls under the lodging rules. You M&IE deduction is just that, it covers Meals and Incidental expenses, which is a grey area. However, if you stay in a hotel, a portion of that bill is deductible. Since the truck is equipped with a sleeper, that becomes your lodging area, but, a shower is a reasonable and nessecary expense under the lodging rules.

In the end, the original examiner reduced my itemized deduction (they focused on medical, charitable and business) by almost $15,000. The appeals agent "gave" me back about $7,500. Prior to this meeting, I owed about $4,000, the guesstimate is that amount has been reduced to between $2,500 and $3,000.

BTW, if you tithe to a church, DO NOT DO IT IN CASH, only by check, thus you have a paper trail to prove the deduction. Most people tithe in cash, unless the church is giving you a receipt at the end of the service, that money doesn't exist.

 

Dang Striker- sorry to hear about the loss but thank you on the very good info! Knowledge is power when it comes to this sort of stuff.

Thank you!

 

They stated that during my audit. However, I asked them what they do about companies and muzak systems and that many of them had switched to xm radio instead. She claimed it was different. I said really?

Fully deductible.