Hi there,

I reside in Los Angeles, and will be an independent contractor working in Las Vegas. I will be in Las Vegas on week days and return to Los Angeles in weekends. I found the per diem rate applied in Las Vegas, but get confused. Please, someone can explain to me what the rate that I can use.

Thanks,

You CANNOT use the per diem rate for the hotel costs. For rent and utility costs, you must use the actual cost of what you paid for rent and utilities. The same applies for daily transportation costs.

However, you CAN use the Meal & Incidental Expense per diem rate of $64 per day for your meal and incidental costs (found in the 2009 version of IRS Pub 1542, which can be downloaded from Internal Revenue Service (http://www.irs.gov)).

You need to pro-rate a portion of the $64 for the incidental costs; I typically use $9 per day, leaving $55 per day for the meals.

The meal costs will be cut in half on the Schedule C, so you will only be able to deduct $27.50.

Thanks a lot. Another question I have is can I claim the heath/dental/car insurance at the end of the year?

QUOTE, Can I claim the heath/dental/car insurance at the end of the year? "---Yes, you can deduct your health/dental and car expenses( if you qulaify, you may choose mileage rate, $55/mile for business use; you also deduct the costs of tolls, parking fees, interest on your vehicle loan(if applicable) However, if you don't use your vehicle 100% for your business, then your expenses will need to be prorated between business and personal use. So, you need to keep a milegage log.
But You can't deduct your vehicle insurance expenses.
Also you may deduct 50% of all your qualified meals expenses.( the meals MUST be directly related to your business as you can see!)

QUOtE," . . . Yes, you can deduct your health/dental expenses"---If the amount of the expenses exceed 7.5% of your AGI(10% of AGI, I Guess, if you are subject to AMT).please a make a noteof this!!