Deducting mileage

Not an accountant but I would have to imagine since it is not the same "job" as hospital A and your paycheck is from a different entity then you cannot deduct mileage. You essentially have two jobs.

Sounds like you should be able to deduct those BCD miles. As I understand it, if an independent contractor is carrying in vehicle tools, equipment ect, that is essential to perform the job then they can deduct the mileage.

Carry a stethoscope?

you can deduct miles from job to moonlight and home.

Deductible: Job--moonlight--home


not deductible: home-job

The simple way to look at it is like this:

You can't deduct mileage from your house to your first reporting site. And you can't deduct mileage from your last reporting site to your home.

So if you are only moonlighting at one hospital day, you would not be able to deduct anything. But if you spent 4 hours at B and then drove to C and spent 4 hours there, the mileage from B to C would be deductible.

Now, there is a technique that your fellow independent contractors may be using, that I think is a bunch of BS and I won't sign any return that uses this technique (and I'm fairly aggressive, but to me this is a bridge too far).

They say they have a "home office". In theory, that makes any additional traveling that day a deductible expense.

I feel it is difficult to justify having a home office if you are not actually doing work out of your home office. This becomes a facts and circumstances thing.

somehow missed that. The work we do at home is continuing education, arranging medical malpractice insurance, emailing for meetings, etc. Yes it definitely sounds like somewhat of a stretch.

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I have friends in sales that get their car notes paid for and still take the mileage deduction.

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Hope your friends never get audited.
The risk of an audit is so small, but I would never want to roll the dice of doing something fishy.
Used to work with people's tax returns. AMAZING how many people cheat.

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They don't really view it as cheating, just leveling the playing field.....or that's how they rationalize it.

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Met a lady once, her husband had claimed 13k in wages, and had gotten about a 8k refund. (Thanks to earned income credit and other various credits).
Told her he needed to amend and file this as self-employment because she said he didn't work for anyone and "just kept his odd jobs in a notebook, and we are just trying to be honest citizens and pay our taxes on that money"
I said okay, file as self-employed. He's self-employed per IRS regulations.
She refused. Said how dare I make her amend, when they are just being honest and no one would have known if they hadn't filed anyways and they wouldn't have had to pay, but "Out of the goodness of our hearts, we wanted to file"
Oh please. You made a profit of $8k off of taxes, don't whine to me about paying out of the goodness of your heart, you didn't pay a dime.
She knew if they filed as self-employed, he would owe back part of that refund (since he didn't pay SS tax or Medicare tax).

just a good ole citizen