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Bill Kulsrud, Ph.D./Assoc. Professor of Accounting: Some of my favorites that people tend to miss
are for example, charitable mileage. If you volunteer to teach Sunday school or you’re
helping the Boy Scouts or doing some other type of charitable work, then the mileage
that you drive is deductible. Now, you have to itemize your deductions and you generally
I believe, it’s 14 cents a mile for 2012. But that’s sort of a freebie that a lot
of people just miss out on.
Bob Jamison, Ph.D./Professor of Accounting: You want to have everything documented- everything
imaginable you want documentation. This is particularly true in the area of travel and
entertainment but it also goes without saying charitable contributions, basically any expenses
that you might have.
Bill Kulsrud, Ph.D./Assoc. Professor of Accounting: A lot of people think about their cash contributions
but they forget about those bags of clothes that they dropped off at the Goodwill, or
gave to the Salvation Army, that old computer that they gave away, that old television that
isn’t an HDTV they gave that away- as long as you gave it to a qualified charitable organization
and didn’t give it to just somebody on the street, then you can take a deduction for
the value of that property.
Bill Kulsrud, Ph.D./Assoc. Professor of Accounting: If you’re driving to the doctor then again,
you’re entitled to a deduction for the mileage of going from your home and to get care.
Bill Kulsrud, Ph.D./Assoc. Professor of Accounting: If you have the home office then you would
get deductions such as for your insurance expense, at an allocable portion. So if your
home office represented 10% of the space in you home, then you could take 10% of the cost
of the insurance, 10% of the cost of the utilities.
Bob Jamison, Ph.D./Professor of Accounting: Certainly these things have been abused in
the past and Congress has put an awful lot of limitations on the charitable contribution,
primarily that you must document what the contribution is or in the case of service
performed for the Boy Scouts, place of worship, art museum, whatever it might be, exactly
what those dates were and why you were driving your car and where you were driving it.