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Daycare and Taxes>Taxes: Separate Receipts?
legomom922 04:07 PM 09-18-2010
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!
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legomom922 06:52 PM 09-19-2010
Anyone have any input on this one?
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tymaboy 05:56 AM 09-20-2010
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.
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JJPlaycare 06:16 AM 09-20-2010
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!
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Jewels 06:34 AM 09-20-2010
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!!
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tenderhearts 06:40 AM 09-20-2010
I do what jewels and tymaboy do.
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SunflowerMama 12:40 PM 09-20-2010
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!
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Jewels 03:09 PM 09-20-2010
Yes do non food items seperatly, and ignore all grocery purchases that are food. If your going for standard
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legomom922 05:44 PM 09-20-2010
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.
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Jewels 06:38 PM 09-20-2010
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!
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misol 07:16 PM 09-20-2010
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.
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legomom922 04:25 AM 09-21-2010
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!
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actaktmdt 11:41 AM 09-22-2010
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.
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DCMomOf3 11:50 AM 09-22-2010
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.
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AmandasFCC 12:26 PM 09-22-2010
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.
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Chickenhauler 12:16 AM 09-23-2010
With groceries, it would be really tough (if not impossible) to say "this gallon of milk was only served to daycare kids" or "This pizza wasn't eaten at all by anyone who lives here" or "I ate this whole bag of cookies myself".....OK, that last one is believeable.
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Jewels 04:59 AM 09-23-2010
Originally Posted by 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!
I do them all together, If there are seven items that are time/space or 100% I enter them together, The categories, really dont mean anything, unless its a really big item that needs to be depreciated, Tom Copeland said he just put the categories in there, as a reference more as a general giude but its not completly important to always put them in the correct category, sometimes I seperate the items, If theres a toy and a cleaning......but generally most things go under supplies, and I just put notes on the whats purchased part, saying, Cleaning supplies, toys, and toothbrushes for example
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TomCopeland 05:35 PM 09-26-2010
Keeping separate receipts for business and personal expenses is very difficult, and not required by the IRS. If you have a system where you are keeping your receipts separate then go for it! I wouldn't recommend it because it's more work that you don't have to do.

For food receipts it's much easier to handle. If you use the standard meal allowance rate you don't have to keep any food receipts. Just multiply the number of meals and snacks you served by the standard rate set for the year. If you want to calculate the actual food costs for your business you must save all food receipts (business and personal).

However, if you are using the standard meal allowance method, make sure you save food receipts that have a non-food item on it (paper products, etc.). You can still deduct these items.
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legomom922 05:44 PM 09-26-2010
Hey Tom,

Thanks for reply. Why is it that the IRS does not require reciepts for food, but does for everything else? Just curious...

I usually just wantch infants, and so the parents supply all their food. However, I buy special "treats", popsicles in the summer, extra milk, extra snacks to have on hand etc, so in that case would I just use the actual cost since I am not supply full meals? Or would I take the standard deduction for snacks only? (I dont even know if we an do that) Of course in this case, I dont do that everyday, and if I buy a box of animal crackers, they would last me a month!

So how would this work in my case?

BTW, I love your new blog!!
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TomCopeland 08:42 PM 09-27-2010
The reason the IRS does not require food receipts is because in 2003 I lobbied the IRS to adopt the standard meal allowance rule and they wrote a Revenue Procedure to allow this. I argued that saving food receipts was burdensome and not very accurate. The IRS estimated that it saves providers a vast number hours of paperwork each year.

If you use the standard meal allowance rule you can't claim the actual cost of some meals. It's all one way or the other. If you serve a treat, count this as a snack ($.66 in 2010).

Glad you like my new blog!
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MyAngels 09:14 PM 09-27-2010
Originally Posted by TomCopeland:
The reason the IRS does not require food receipts is because in 2003 I lobbied the IRS to adopt the standard meal allowance rule and they wrote a Revenue Procedure to allow this. I argued that saving food receipts was burdensome and not very accurate. The IRS estimated that it saves providers a vast number hours of paperwork each year.

If you use the standard meal allowance rule you can't claim the actual cost of some meals. It's all one way or the other. If you serve a treat, count this as a snack ($.66 in 2010).

Glad you like my new blog!
Thank you so much for this! Going through all those receipts year after year and adding things up was such a burden!
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dEHmom 04:34 PM 01-08-2011
Originally Posted by TomCopeland:
Keeping separate receipts for business and personal expenses is very difficult, and not required by the IRS. If you have a system where you are keeping your receipts separate then go for it! I wouldn't recommend it because it's more work that you don't have to do.

For food receipts it's much easier to handle. If you use the standard meal allowance rate you don't have to keep any food receipts. Just multiply the number of meals and snacks you served by the standard rate set for the year. If you want to calculate the actual food costs for your business you must save all food receipts (business and personal).

However, if you are using the standard meal allowance method, make sure you save food receipts that have a non-food item on it (paper products, etc.). You can still deduct these items.
so could you just take 100% of all your reasonable expenses/receipts (not personal things like clothing, and such, but just food, household items etc etc) and figure out your time/space %? Do you actually ahve to sit there and calculate each area?
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Unregistered 06:34 PM 01-08-2011
I was told directly from MMK staff to use stand meal allowence as it is impossible to seperate personal from business.....I tired to claim acutal food last year and blew it cuz I had a pack of sodas and gum on the rcpt.....ugh
just do waht jewles stated....best and only way
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Abigail 08:52 PM 01-08-2011
Do receipts stay good for a year or should I photocopy them so the ink doesn't fade? I know the IRS can audit up to three years back, so if I hang onto receipts for three years, I think they would begin to fade. Is there a way to store them that will keep them safe from fading over time?

It would be easy to mark what items were daycare items and what was not, but I'm too OCD that I would take the time to check out separately just so I'm not looking at "hair spray, cat food, shirt" LOL on the receipt with craft supplies and toys and food. No, I wouldn't make a separate trip to the store, but I would separate my items and pay separately just because it's easy to do and nice in the long run for me.
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legomom922 05:16 AM 01-09-2011
Originally Posted by Abigail:
Do receipts stay good for a year or should I photocopy them so the ink doesn't fade? I know the IRS can audit up to three years back, so if I hang onto receipts for three years, I think they would begin to fade. Is there a way to store them that will keep them safe from fading over time?

It would be easy to mark what items were daycare items and what was not, but I'm too OCD that I would take the time to check out separately just so I'm not looking at "hair spray, cat food, shirt" LOL on the receipt with craft supplies and toys and food. No, I wouldn't make a separate trip to the store, but I would separate my items and pay separately just because it's easy to do and nice in the long run for me.
Receipts do fade depending on what store they are. I know my Target here has horrible reciepts and the ones from Christmas are already faded!

Do you have a scanner? If not, I would suggest getting a scanner, and then scanning all your reciepts to your computer. That way, if ever you needed them, tehy are safe , secure and readable, plus you dont have to worry about all space lots of papers take up. I am in the process now of scanning every document I own, so I can get rid of all this paper!
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TomCopeland 07:51 AM 01-10-2011
The only reason to save food receipts is because you are using the actual expenses method of claiming food expenses. If yo use this method you do not have to keep receipts separate (business and personal). It's okay to have personal food expenses on a receipt that has business items on there as well. Keeping separate business receipts is just one method of helping you to determine how much you spent on business food.

Most providers use the standard meal allowance method that doesn't require the saving of any food receipts. However - you want to save food receipts that have non-food items on the receipt. These are still deductible.

For all other business expenses that are used personally as well - add them together by expense category (supplies, toys, office expenses, repairs, etc.) and multiply them by your time-space percentage.

If your receipts are fading either scan them into your computer or photocopy them.
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Tags:receipts, taxes, tom copeland
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