Tax Time question.

Are you a company driver or O/O? If a company driver you can no longer use the per diem deduction. This is a US rule, I see you are Canadian, so disregard.

 

Yes, there is an allowance:

• Page specific to OTR drivers: Meal expenses of long-haul truck drivers - Canada.ca
• Employees of a transport business: Employees of a transport business - Canada.ca
• Transportation employees (different page than above): Transportation employees - Canada.ca

Yes, you should have copies of your logs to support your deductions if you're audited.

 

Logs, receipts for meals, hotels and other road expenses.
Keep them in a fire proof location.

One winter my home caught fire when a gas line was broken by a construction crew, lost all my records to fire and water damage.

As if they knew................, I got audited later that year, and even though the fire chief wrote a letter backing up what I told the tax people, I had to give them back $2200 instead of $4200 that they wanted originally.

 

Click on the links not4hire posted. If a company driver, you can use simplified or detailed. Don’t forget if your running stateside to convert the per diem into us funds.

 

America has quit allowing perdiem to company drivers some years back. The last time we used it was about 13700 in our favor using a basic deduction for a total of 306 service days out (More than 125 miles from home per logbooks for that year) out of 365 days. (In other words we only got about 50 days off that year...) to apply against the taxes on about 67000 gross minus standard deductions etc.

What took us a while to understand that money was not very much as a team, it was less than our minimum wage for a total of about $4.52 per driver (Husband wife team) per hour for just under 7400 hours worked total that year. And my salary as a trainer was about 30% what our coast to coast runs would have paid at .75 to the truck twice weekly. (about 5800 miles weekly total would have grossed round 4400 dollars instead of the 1900 net salary we recieved in training for several months. 1550 for me and 300 for spouse weekly)

I can go on, but you can see how a trucking company being very careful about what really high dollar loads to put on certain drivers who are on salary that will be about half the cost to the company in payroll makes out pretty darn well.

Taxes. It really simplifies your situation as you work the year when you understand how much money that was left on the table for a variety of reasons.

 

YES!!!

 

Ignore the useless ramblings of the retired gent from Arkansas as he has no idea what the laws are in CANADA!

 

Just as not4hire wrote. Enter the links he gave you to the Government website, and read for yourself.