I am employed by an agricultural company with their only office located in Ypsilanti, MI. I am a territorial sales manager. My territory is New York State. I have 35 independent agricultural dealers that see our products. I provide product support, sales training, and marketing advice. I have an office in my home in New York State. To perform these duties, I travel to each one of these dealerships periodically. I provide the vehicle and the company pays me a car allowance and a mileage fee. I drive a lot of miles in a year, 35-40,000 to accomplish this job. We are in the process of getting our taxes prepared and we are being told that the IRS will not allow us to claim all of these miles. We have to specify a given number of commuting miles each day.

I could see this commuting miles applying if I was an insurance salesman or a real estate salesman or anybody else who worked out of a local office. Example: I would leave my home in the morning, travel to the company office, get my orders for the day, go make the calls, return to the local office, make a report, and then drive home. I can see that these miles between home and the office, coming and going, should be considered commuting miles.

The way I understand this, my home is the office. I'm not commuting to an office. Please advise. Thank you.