Tax Question for Airplane Owners

[Trung Si Ma]

Question for those of you who use your own aircraft for CAP (or anyone else with an opinion obviously) -

When you drive your car for CAP activities, you can deduct for the mileage (currently .48 / mile), but what do you do if you fly your own aircraft without getting reimbursed?  Do you claim the standard A/C rate?  A/C rate and fuel?  Do you claim "mileage"?  Some artful combination of the three?  Something else entirely?

I'm not generally talking about SAR's, but more as transportation.  An example would be flying to the location of the annual wing safety meeting.

[SJFedor]

Not sure about CAP, but I knew a guy back in PA that would only fly his personally owned C-182 when he could write it off for business expenses (he's a lawyer). So, I'm sure there's a way, I just don't know it.


Is there a CPA in the house??!?!

[davedove]

I'm an accountant, but it's been a while since I've done any tax work, so I can't tell you the details.

In principle, you can certainly write off the aircraft costs as a tax deduction.  For cars, the general rule is you can either keep track of and deduct actual expenses, or opt to use a standard mileage rate.

So, you could certainly use actual expenses.  I don't know if there is a standard rate for aircraft.

[IceNine]

Actual expenses on an aircraft are considerably different than a vehicle though.

The way the rules are written (just my interpretation)

You can use Actual Cost on the fuel, because that is a trackable, used for "Official Business" transportation cost.

The maintenance cost would have to be done on some sort of standard rate, because you obviously won't be able write off an entire 100 hour, to CAP use.

I don't however know what that rate would be, but again logic tells me since CAP has a standard rate that should be acceptable.

[SJFedor]

Yeah, there's the national standard minor MX rate for our aircraft. It's what the AF pays, plus actual fuel costs.

C-172: 30/hr
C-182: 41/hr
182RG: 52/hr
206: 47/hr
DHC2: 64/hr
MT-7: 29/hr
GA-8: 37/hr
C185: 59/hr
Member owned standard reimbursement rate is 30/hr for single engines.

CAPR 173-3 outlines this in Attachment 1.

http://level2.cap.gov/documents/R173003.pdf

[Trung Si Ma]

And since I drive a 172, I was thinking that $30/hr plus actual fuel costs would be the number that I used.

[SJFedor]

I don't see why not. You may want to talk to an accountant or a tax lawyer before you do anything like that, but I don't see it being a bad thing.