Buisness expense deductions

[Jan79]

My mother is in a memory care center and my brother and I are renting out her house to help pay for her care center rent. My brother took several trips to my mother's house (about a 4 hour drive) to clean out her personal belongings and prepare the house for renting. My mother paid my brother for the cost of his gas and food for those trips. I consider those costs to be part of the rental expenses but I'm not sure how to categorize them on my mother's taxes. I don't think I can claim a travel mileage and food deduction because it wasn't my mother who did the travelling and it wasn't her vehicle. Can I just include those costs as part of the cost of getting the house ready for rental, maybe cleaning costs? My mother didn't pay my brother as an employee--he got no wages--she only paid for his travel expenses. So how do I categorize
those costs? 

[DavidD66]

You can deduct what your mother paid your brother, and if all your mother was doing was reimbursing you brother for out of pocket expenses, he would not need to claim it as income.  If she paid, or pays him for cleaning, etc. then he would have to claim it as income.  You can deduct what you mother paid your brother as Miscellaneous Rental Expenses.