Page 34 - 2024 March April Magazine

DIFFERENT
VS.
Unusual
By David Shelvey
Not too long ago, I ran into a friend of mine. We exchanged ‘Hellos’ and I asked him if there was anything new going on. He responded that he was getting married. I asked him when, and he said in 181 days. I asked him if he had a location picked out for the service, he said at Ocean Shores. And to finish off, I asked him if he had honeymoon plans. His response was that he and his fiancé wanted to be different, so they are going to spend a week in Leavenworth. I responded, "Now that is different." He said, "Yes, but it will be a nice change."
Sometimes it is important to have a nice change, to do something different, maybe even unusual. Take your travel to the courthouse. If you are coming southbound on Hwy 167, and if you know the Puyallup area, Hwy 167 ends at Meridian. According to my GPS, the fastest route is to take River Road.
It is the fastest route if traffic isn’t backed up at the bridge. As an alternative, you could drive through Fife to I-5. Keep in mind, if you drive through Fife on a school day, you will hit the 20-mph kid zone armed with speed safety cameras. But to be different, you could take Hwy 512, Hwy 16, Sprague Street Exit, and 11th Street. You still end up at the courthouse, just a different route. Coming from Gig Harbor, how about taking 6th Avenue? Just remember to leave 10 minutes early!
There are other things you can do that are different. If your paralegal is researching cases for a memorandum, you could print out an entire case on point, and sit in the lunchroom and read it during lunch. If your client sends you a 15-
page complaint, rather than sitting at your desk reading it, download it onto your tablet or laptop, then go to a coffee shop and read it there. You are still looking for holes, just at a different location. Granted, most of us cannot concentrate in a coffee shop if the establishment is playing loud music by the ‘Screaming Dead Lizards’. If you could, that would be unusual.
In the Pierce County Lawyer Magazine you are reading, you will find different and unusual articles. Granted, if there were an article about tips for tuning your aircraft’s jet engine or a review of front-bumper-mount tow bars for Jeeps, that would be unusual. However, if there were an Aircraft Club or Jeep Club for lawyers, then the article might be different. What if someone were to write an article entitled ‘The Two Tacomas?’
You might think that was very unusual. Spoiler alert: that article is in this magazine.
Hopefully, this article has inspired you to change it up, to do something different, but still accomplish what you set out to do. Maybe even do something unusual.
In my last article, I wrote about how I helped a fellow lawyer friend who had to fix an IRS problem. Since that article, I have been asked a couple of other IRS questions, so I thought I would share them.
MILEAGE - the IRS requires every individual claiming mileage to keep a contemporaneous mileage log from the
start of the business-related travel to completion. Also, know the difference between business miles and commuting miles. Business miles start from the office. If your office is at your house, that means from before you leave the driveway to the time you park the car (motorcycle). If your office is not your house, the IRS calls driving from your house to the courthouse and then office commuter miles. I have seen IRS agents with Google Maps comparing the business mileage in the logbook to make sure it does match with the travel miles on Google Maps. The solution for attorneys working in offices, not in their house, is to drive to the office first and then head to the courthouse, meeting place, etc.
ORDINARY AND NECESSARY
BUSINESS EXPENSES - Although Sec. 162(a)
of the U.S. Code requires that an expense be ordinary and necessary to a taxpayer’s business to be deductible, the
Code section does not define “ordinary and necessary.” The prevailing definition of the terms as they relate to Sec. 162(a) comes from Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111 (1933). The IRS says that to be deductible, a business expense must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your industry. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or business. An expense does not have to be indispensable to be considered necessary.
If you are interested in reading a case where a pro se requested
34 PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER | March/April 2024