My wife owns a small business. She has lost her mileage ledger for last year. Can she average previous years records and claim the deduction? She has an accountant run her taxes and will be seeing him in a few days. He is hard to speak with this time of year and she just wants to be prepared when she meets with him.
Thanks Robert
This is one where your accountant's opinion is the one that counts, since it is he who would defend the return should IRS choose to examine it.
At least that's my opinion.
Steve
"Robert H" wrote
While these records are supposed to be kept on a regular basis throughout the year, it's not unheard of in cases where the records are lost (theft of vehicle, etc) to reconstruct them from other substantiating records. For every bank deposit there would be a trip to and from the bank. Seems logical. Each purchase at Office Depot should mean a trip to Office Depot. Seems logical. Check her appointment calendar. For every out of the office appointment she must have miles driven. Seems logical.
So, a quick run through your checking account records, credit card statements, and other records like a calendar, day-timer or crackberry might provide clues to where she may have driven.
Copying 2007 year data is not sufficient.
I agree w/ Steve. If this is a new client, I'm a little skeptical, if this is a long-time client that has a history of bringing good records, I'm less concerned, accept their explanation and inform them of the risks should the records be requested on audit.
I would think that the IRS wouldn't disallow all mileage costs even if you lost your log.
If you are running a business and show both income, it's reasonable to assume that you had to do some at least driving to generate that income-- as another poster mentioned, post office, the Office Depot, bank, customer locations, etc.
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At least in one case IRS did deny the whole thing. AICPA has an article about the case at:
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