Business vs. Personal Mileage in a Trip

[RickLC]

I have a question about business and personal mileage driven in one trip which I'm not finding a definitive answer for. My wife thinks the whole trip should be counted as business, I don't. Today's example is typical.

We drove to the YMCA for a workout, which happened to be on the way to a new client she needed to meet. So after that, we drove from the Y to the new client. Then to another new client meeting, and then to a job site (she cleans houses) to finish a job, then home which is our home office.

She's convinced that the whole trip including to the Y is expensed as business miles since she would have had to drive that distance anyway to get to the new client meeting. I've been saying that only the miles driven after leaving the Y count as business miles since travel to the Y was for personal reasons.

Who is correct?

[tallen]

My understanding is that stops made for personal purposes that are "incidental" to the business purpose of the trip do not disqualify the whole trip from being deductible. You say the Y was on the way to the other stops -- such that you would have driven past the Y regardless of whether you stopped there or not? Was the stop at the Y "incidental" to the purpose of the trip? How much time did the workout take vs. time spent on business purposes? Were you planning to go to the Y for a workout that day regardless of whether you had the other stops to make? Or was it, "hey we are going to be driving past the Y today, why don't we leave a little early and stop to get a workout in on the way?"

Personally I would probably count the whole trip as business miles, assuming the Y really was on the way to the other stops, such that there were no extra miles driven. You do keep a log book, right?

[RickLC]

We tend to go to the Y every Saturday at that time. We were there a little over 2 hours and the whole trip lasted around 10 hours which included lunch between the two new client visits, which I understand is incidental and included. We would go to the Y at that time whether or not we had any business purposes.

Let me give another example. We had an employee who was going to go to a bigger city for personal reasons. We asked since it would take him closer to a vacuum repair store if he could pick up a repaired vacuum while he was out that way. However, he would have to make around a 15 mile total detour to do so. We wanted to reimburse him for his business miles to do that. Of course we could give him whatever we wanted, but if it wasn't strictly business miles, it would have to be included as part of his wages and taxed accordingly. She wanted to give him a reimbursement for the complete round trip from our home to the repair shop and back because that is the miles we would have driven to pick it up. I said to make it a simple reimbursement and not wages, we could only reimburse him for the miles extra he drove that he wouldn't have had to drive to pick it up for us. I think in the end I reimbursed for a full round trip but counted it as part of his wages since I didn't feel we could justify more than the detour amount for an accountable reimbursement.

At least she's consistent even when it is a strike against us financially.

[Freelancier]

You can plug the whole route from your home to the different business locations into google maps and get an actual mileage that you can use as your business deduction. That's what I tend to do when I'm driving around like what you describe. Act like the personal stops aren't in the itinerary and map that out. At least it's defensible to the tax people.

[RickLC]

I should add, yes, we do log our miles. She has an app on her phone for it, and is paired with the bluetooth in the car. When she gets in and starts the engine and it connects, the log automatically starts, then automatically stops when the bluetooth connection disconnects. Then a window pops up asking whether to count the miles as business or personal. Each day I get the information from her phone log and enter in the IRS standard expense for business miles, recording it as a personal investment. So there is also a log in the accounting system of business miles and what clients/destinations those miles are for.

So this discussion has been had before on similar situations. Having done bookkeeping professionally for years, that was my understanding (I like to stay on the safe side of the law, so I tend to error on the side of caution more than pushing the boundaries) of whether a trip from one place to another was personal or not, based on the purpose of why I'm going there. Since the trip to the Y would have happened anyway, I figured it was fair that it both reduced the business miles and personal miles if we had done them separately. But I realize I could be wrong, as whether it is incidental or not can sometimes get into fuzzy territory, and this may be one.

So I started looking for answers, and couldn't find anyone talking about this specific situation on the Net. So decided to find someone to ask. I know I could get away with recording it all, if it shouldn't be counted, since an auditor would have no idea we'd stopped there if there is no documentation, or whether the stop was incidental or not if we did mention it. But wanting to follow the law as well as I can, I want to record the accurate and correct expense. Thank you for your time.