Originally posted by: dullard
If you have a small self-proprietorship, then there are some nice rules that you get to follow.
1) You are often better off just taking the standard mile deduction. That is (I think) 37.5 cents per mile in 2004. Thus add up your mileage, and forget about trying to keep gas receipts, maintanence receipts, repair receipts, etc. In many cases this is easy. For example, my wife drove from home to another city to do business. She did it once a week for 50 weeks. Multiply the mileage for one trip by 50 and she is done. No complicated receipt handling. All she needs to do is have her written claim that she drove those trips. (In fact, in some cases you don't even need written records).
2) Spending on things like food have several shortcuts. You can take the federal per diem rate for
meals and lodging. Forget receipts and just use those numbers. Or you could use receipts for a few typical trips and average them. Then multiply that number by the total number of trips.
Of course you must qualify for these deductions and meet a few restrictions, but in many cases it is easy if you didn't keep receipts. You have 1 month left to keep good records, that'll help you in calculating those averages for typical trips.
I'm thinking that you run a pretty shoddy buisness if you don't have good records. Maybe this is a hint to do better paperwork.
