Taxes: Separate Receipts?

[legomom922]

MMK suggests that we should always ask for separate reciepts for Dc & home and to keep all personal grocery reciepts so that you can show you separated the personal from the DC.

However..I am totaly confused here...If I have all my groceries on 1 reciept, and there is only 1 or 2 items on there that are for DC, doesnt that prove enough that only those 2 items were for DC and all the other stuff was not? It's not like I am trying to write off the whole bill! KWIM?

Also, some items on the reciepts may be for both (time/space) so what reciepts would those go on IF you went through all the trouble to ask for separate reciepts all the time?

I am currenly trying to get caught up on my inputting onto MMK all my expenses from the last month, and this is why these questions are coming up!

[legomom922]

Anyone have any input on this one?

[tymaboy]

Grocery wise I do not keep them separate. From what I understand if we claim meals/snacks we can not claim the food we use in those meals/snacks too. I keep track of how many meals/snacks I serve threw out the yr. When it comes to other products it all depends on how busy the store is or what mood I am in whether I ring them up separate. Alot of times I will put them together & save the receipt. I know what product on the receipt is for DC.

[JJPlaycare]

I do not seperate out my home and daycare grocery stuff! If I only had the time to do this, considering I am usually shopping with my 2 children! Not feasable for me!! What I do is use the daily meal allowances and I don't really need to keep track of what I bought for daycare and what I bought for home! I do keep all my reciepts, but I just total up all of my meals and snacks and my tax lady uses a certain amount which is configured out for each! Not sure if this saves me money, loses me money, but it is much easier and takes alot less time and headache, in which I think is just as important and worth quite a few dollars! ::

[Jewels]

I go by the standard irs deductions for grocereies, and if you do that you do not have to keep your reciepts, just how many meals served, and if you do the food programs , you already do that. and you can throw those grocery reciepts in the trash, it is way to hard, to itemize groceries in my opinion, you do almost need to do all seperate shopping to make this method work, I would just find this way to much work!!

[tenderhearts]

I do what jewels and tymaboy do.

[SunflowerMama]

I just started childcare in April and have been just doing one grocery receipt and have been recording all those receipts at the end of each month.

I think I'm going to go to the general deduction for meals served.

But what do you do for items that aren't food? Should I go back through all my receipts and just record non-food items seperately (storage/supplies/paper products/arts/crafts, etc.)?

Any advice would be great! Thanks!

[Jewels]

Yes do non food items seperatly, and ignore all grocery purchases that are food. If your going for standard

[legomom922]

I only do infants, so I never have to worry about food or the food program, but I was talking about things on my grocery reciept that are not groceries. LOL I usually do all my shopping at walmart, and MMK suggested to keep all of your personnal reciepts too.

[Jewels]

I would never seperate personal from bsiness cause most arent seperate, pretty much everything I buy is used for daycare also, and if its all personal, like clothing, I just throw those in the trash, the seminar I took of Toms, he said the only one, thats the best for keeping seperate is the food, if you do The actual food expense.........I shopped at walmart last sunday, and bought groceries along, with some other stuff, and I just circled the things I would actually deduct, and added those items up, and recorded them in MMK,and then threw the recipet in my reciept box, to hopefully never look at again!

[misol]

I use the standard meal deduction so I don't keep track of groceries but I do go through the receipts for non-grocery items and use the t/s % for those. One trick I have learned is that when I am loading my grocery items on the belt, I just put all of the the non-food items at the end so that when I go through my receipts later,everything I need is already grouped together at the end of the receipt.

[legomom922]

Jewels, since you are also using MMK, when you enter these items on the expense page, do you enter each item separately with the tax? Or do you try if possible, to group them together? I do them separate, but it takes so darn long!

[actaktmdt]

I keep separate receipts for this. I go daycare shopping weekly and family shopping 2x month. Since starting the daycare I keep recieipts of both and we have excell spreed sheets for the daycare accounts (which buys the dc food) My husband is an account so he keeps track of everything for me...just wish he was a tax cpa.

[DCMomOf3]

I don't always separate reciepts for non-food items. I mark on the reciept what items are for the DC and store them in my daycare files. I don't itemize anything that is not DC related. For food I do the standard deductions like the others.

[AmandasFCC]

I don't separate receipts. If there's a daycare item on a long list of personal items, I star it, or cross off the personal items.