<p>My friends told me that I can file kids’ community service milage for tax returns. How did every family do for this purpose? Do you keep an edometer log for every time you send your kid to do community service? What are your tips to keep the required information on tax return form? Thanks for your sharing.</p>
<p>We keep a log in cars to track this, and also mapquest out where we are going. I don’t track going to and from meetings, but I keep track of all the running around to get supplies, and anything related directly to the charity work. I just keep the log with my other documents for itemized deductions, such as goodwill receipts and donation letters.</p>
<p>We never filed for mileage for driving our kids to anything. </p>
<p>BUT we do keep track of mileage for our own travels for certain things. We do it the old fashioned way with a little notebook. Date- number of miles traveled. We do not write down the odometer readings…just the total mileage traveled…and where we were going.</p>
<p>At the end of the year, we add it all up. </p>
<p>I can tell you…there have been some years that the effort to do this far outweighed the tax benefit.</p>
<p>but my kids go to the same place and volunteer and then drive home. We just keep track on the calendar, then figure the mileage once and multiply it by the number of times they attended. If we had to go out of the way to do something special, then I would use the odometer and just right it down.</p>
<p>Thanks for everyone’s experiences! I think keeping a log in the car will be easier for the end of year calculation. But how to have the child write down odometer for every trip will be a problem. I will try and see how it goes.</p>
<p>It never occured to me to track my kids’ volunteer hours, though I do mine for work. I find it easiest to write start and end times of the odometer and then put them into Excel. That way there’s a crystal clear written record for the IRS.</p>
<p>There are free cell phone apps for that. :-)</p>
<p>Oh, really? where to download tha cell phone app? Thanks.</p>
<p>Don’t know if you have Android, iPhone, if you want free apps or paid ones. You’ll need to find the apps that work well with your own personal criteria. </p>
<p>There are lots of apps for tracking mileage, just do a basic search for that. There are also apps for tracking hours spent. One is Reward Volunteers (iPhone, web)</p>