I try to achieve both of these things.

I believe any miles done for the purposes of working as an independent contractor are deductible as business miles.

Therefore this is how I would handle these.

Home-Work-Home - Commuting miles

Home-work-Officiate-Home - You can deduct the miles in excess of the miles driven home-work-home.

Home-officiate-home - Business miles, all are deductible.

For example if you drive 20 miles one way to work and home, your have 40 commuting miles. If you drive home-work-officiate-home and the total trip is 60 miles, 40 miles of that trip are non-deductible as commuting miles while 20 miles are considered to be business miles.

Now, as for the camps, or multiday events.

Home-work-camp-hotel-camp-hotel-camp-home (Friday evening-Saturday-Sunday) In this case the similar rules apply. You can deduct the miles for the trip less the commuting miles from home to work and back home.



I know personally I always try to drive home (or at least past my house) between work and officiating therefore all of the miles are driven for business purposes. That isn't always possible, but it generally is.

To count the miles from home does not require you to have a home office by tax standards set up in your home (those are VERY STRICT). It only requires your home to be the address that you base your business out of, and when travelling will generally leave from (the leave from requirement is to prevent you from having a small "office" 200 miles away and claiming that as your leaving location for business purposes.

This is how it was explained to me by a fellow official who also happens to be a CPA owning his own firm.


For keeping track of my miles I enter everything into a spreadsheet. My tax time gets complicated because I do multiple businesses (officiating, mystery shopping, and a supply company) based from my home, plus I also work as a teacher two days a week and a substitute teacher 3 days per week.

Hmm...I think I'd reconsider using that CPA, or at least clarifying if that's really what he said.

The key to understanding deductibility of officiating expenses is understanding that the schools/locations at which you officiate are almost assuredly temporary work locations, distinct from your regular job. It doesn't matter where you consider the home of your officiating business, the key elements are your primary residence and whether your regular job is in another location.

If you have a regular place of employment outside the home, then any travel to a temporary work location (which isn't the same as a second job at another, fixed and regular location) between either work or home is deductible. Training and camps, being business expenses and also not a regular first or second job, would likely qualify as well. You don't have to do these tortured "in excess of" calculations.

If you work at home, then you're out of luck on this one - travel even to temp work locations is only deductible if it's outside your metro area.

Here is a handy chart from the IRS (yes, they're good for something) that pretty clearly lays it out:

https://www.irs.gov/publications/images/11081l02.gif

And the underlying publication:

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p46...link1000136362

Look up the definition of job and employee vs independent contractor. This is where things get murky.

Not as it applies to this section or category. It absolutely makes a difference in other areas, but not the deductibility of travel expenses.