Robert, a new client of yours, is a self-employed caterer in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Robert drives his personal van when delivering catered meals to customers. You have asked him to provide the amount of business miles driven using his vehicle. You are planning on using the standard mileage method to calculate Robert’s deduction for transportation costs. Robert has responded by saying, "Well, I don’t really keep track of my miles. I guess I drove around 3,000 miles last year for the business." What would you say to Robert?

Respuesta :

Answer:  We will recommend him to use standard mileage method

Explanation: Robert is a caterer who travels a lot. Hence he have two options by which he can compute the transportation deduction he is eligible for. These two methods are named as actual expense method and standard mileage method.

As in the given scenario Robert do not actually knows the expense he has incurred so he has to use standard mileage method in which he has to assume the unit cost.

Thus, assuming standard rate to be 0.50 cents per mile he his eligible for a deduction of ( 0.5 cents * 3,000 miles), that is, $1500.