Basically, the program will ask you what the mileage on the vehicle was on Jan 1 of the tax year, and on Dec 31 of the tax year. Then you'll enter how many of those miles were business miles, how many were personal miles, and how many were commuting miles. That's it. Example:
Start of year mileage: 13,600
End of Year Mileage: 26,315
Business miles driven: 6,318
Commuting miles: 186
Personal miles:
Doing the math, you can see the total miles driven for the year is 12, 715. Of that, 6,318 are business miles., 186 are commuting miles, and the remaining 6,211 miles are personal use miles. Depending on what you select in the program, the program will do the math for you to figure your deduction.
Generally, if the vehicle was not 100% business use then you can't claim actual expenses. Besides, taking the "per mile" deduction is almost always better than the actual expenses anyway, unless you had to have thousands upon thousands of dollars of repairs done on the car during the time it was classified for business use. So if you ad $5,000 of repairs done in April, but didn't start using the car in the business until June, then your repair costs just flat out do not figure into the business equation at all. Though depending on "exactly" what those repairs were, it may add to the cost basis of the vehicle. (For example, replacing the engine and/or transmission would add to the cost basis.)
