My wife runs a cleaning business as a sole proprietor. In a typical day, she travels from our home to several clients' locations in our area and then back home again. There is no "home office" to speak of, other than our home being listed as the legal business address. However, she doesn't qualify for a home office deduction at this time, as she occasionally uses our home computer or her smartphone for bookkeeping and does not store any inventory. Our home computer is used for both personal and business purposes (bookkeeping mostly). My question is: Is she allowed to deduct business mileage for traveling from home to clients' locations and then back home again, even though she doesn't actually qualify for a home office deduction? Or would this be considered commuting miles (which are not deductible)? ... View more

Our 17-year-old child was court-ordered to foster care in 2017. My mother-in-law legally become the permanent foster parent for our child. She had physical custody of our child for all of 2018. Does this make her the custodial parent and my wife and I the non-custodial parents? Also, she had offered to let us claim our child as a dependent for 2018 taxes (to help us out financially). Could this be accomplished via Form 8832, or is this not possible between a foster parent who's also a relative? ... View more