Mileage log - every day vs. monthly?

December 18, 2012 7:59 AM

Is a day by day mileage log an excessive amount of info to keep? Or does the IRS really want to know that much about where we drive?

My company has just hired a 3rd party vendor to enforce mileage tracking and fuel expenditures for employees with leased vehicles. They have included a sample log for an individual to keep a manual record of their mileage. Employees are also required to report "Business" and "Personal" miles online on a monthly basis.

The sample log provided by the vendor has a spreadsheet with entry lines for every day of the month. Will the IRS really be looking for a trip by trip log for every day of the month, in an audit?

Or is this excessive information, and it's only necessary to show a monthly tally of mileage for business and personal trips?

posted by lootie777 to Work & Money (9 answers total)

The short answer: yes, yes they will.
posted by bfranklin at 8:03 AM on December 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

And to be a little less flippant: how else can they reasonably ferret out fraud?
posted by bfranklin at 8:04 AM on December 18, 2012

I work for a large company with hundreds of vehicles and we don't ask our employees to track their mileage down to the specific day for tax purposes. However, we have used mileage information in the past to identify various abuses of company policy, so it can be useful data to have on file.
posted by something something at 8:09 AM on December 18, 2012

My impression is that yes, the IRS wants the most detailed information you can give them. The last time my company was audited for something (not mileage but something equally "trivial"), we had to pull reams of paper out of cold storage and explain the handwritten notes in the margins. Examining minutiae is their job, and you want to make it as easy for them as possible.
posted by epanalepsis at 8:14 AM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is the federal government. There is (almost) no such thing as too much info, especially when it comes to wanting money from them, or wanting to give them less money.

You should have seen the kind of detail the FEMA guys wanted re: Hurricane Ike. And the IRS is significantly more demanding than FEMA could dream of being. Look up their definitions of de minimis use of stuff, or employer "benefits" like t-shirts. We went and got a private finding letter from them to clarify our specific case because we somehow managed to run afoul of their copious instructions, in their initial opinion. For neon-colored t-shirts that no one would ever use in public unless they were required to. The "Taxable Fringe Benefits Guide" for government agencies is 91 pages long - the t-shirt section refers to, I am not kidding here, "IRC §162; Reg. §1.62-2(c)(1)". There is no limit to the depth of the detail involved with these people.

We track mileage on a daily basis, and require employees to state the beginning and ending locations, and our fiscal staff verify the distances using Google Maps. It's actually a written policy - we only reimburse, at the IRS rate naturally, for the distance as given by Google. I'm a little surprised the auditor's office doesn't ask us to actually attach the maps to the forms; the PTSD they have from the t-shirt debacle seems quite severe. We also have GPS on the take-home vehicles, which are very rarely given to people; the funky "we pay you for the amount of money you would spend on transportation since we didn't give you a car" allowance amounts are based on how far away you live and what parking costs are (if you don't have free assigned parking on site.)

It's kind of not shocking that a significant number of employees who would be eligible for reimbursements or car allowances don't even bother with it, at my job. I think I've put in two or three reimbursement requests in 4.5 years, and I drive for reimbursable reasons all the time.
posted by SMPA at 8:34 AM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Even when you're not a large company it's a good idea to do this, in the (less likely?) case that you get audited. I am pretty much no-risk, but for the job that I use my car for (independent contractor position) I have an excel sheet with my mileage and hours for each day. Probably wont need it, but I have it.
posted by DoubleLune at 8:39 AM on December 18, 2012

Yes, you should track it. Do they usually audit and look? No.

But it's an excellent sign of other BS if they do look and find it to be sketchy. They really do care about each individual expense, and a trip is an expense.
posted by zippy at 9:11 AM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Ugh, that's what I thought. I just know it's going to be a battle to get them to do it.

Thanks everyone, great answers!
posted by lootie777 at 11:44 AM on December 18, 2012

If you're looking for someway to make it easier on the employees you may want to consider some smartphone App.

I track my own mileage using "Milebug" for the itouch and it makes it pretty painless. I know that I would have lost a paper log a long time ago.
posted by bswinburn at 12:46 PM on December 18, 2012