Just curious, when claiming for food expenses, how do you keep it separate? Do you buy stuff for your family and then the daycare on a different bill? I forgot to save all of my receipts this year, so I guess I am SOL to claim it.
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Just curious, when claiming for food expenses, how do you keep it separate? Do you buy stuff for your family and then the daycare on a different bill? I forgot to save all of my receipts this year, so I guess I am SOL to claim it.
I buy everything at the a same time and then just highlight what was for the dayhome. I not sure if thats the way to go because this is my first year doing taxes for a dayhome so I hope that is fine.
I pay for everything separate which usually means I have two orders at the store.
I am not sure how you could put it on a separate bill because the daycare food and family food intertwines.
I cook a large batch of food that lasts for my family's dinner as well as the daycare's lunch the next day. Also snacks I might buy go to my own children as well as the daycare children so not sure how that would be possible to keep separate or on different receipts.
My accountant said that some portion of my groceries is covered. I forget what percentage.
basically I save all my grocery receipts and enter them into my spreadsheet and then I give my accountant the spreadsheet every year and he does some sort of formula for whatever portion I am allowed to claim.
Same here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spixie33
I buy all the groceries together. Come tax time I charge $7/child and this gives me a rough estimate as to how much I spent on groceries for the year for them. It's worked well so far and I've never been audited for it (knock on wood) and I save all my grocery receipt so that if I ever do...they can figure it out, lol.
I think its close to 25-35% depending on how long your kids are here, how many kids you have...I think also I have charged $8-10/child in the past. I can't recall the exact amount, that is up to my accountant to figure it out :)....I keep all my receipts, and don't buy separately....that would be more chaotic for me - i would rather keep it all together and then add it up and submit the final total figure to the accountant to take a percentage out of it. Hope that helps!
I buy all the groceries together. There are several ways you can calculate daycare meal expenses. One is to make up your menu and then cost it out - which pulls from the grocery bills the daycare items. You can also use your entire grocery bill and then portion it out using the formula that 2 snacks = meal and 2 kid meals = an adult meal. So for instance one meal and two snacks = 2 meals per day per child so 10 meals x 5 days = 50 daycare meals. You do the same for family which will be different for everyone depending on if you pack a lunch to send to school or work with hubby or if they eat out. Include the weekends for your family. Take the total of meals eaten and divide that number into the total grocery bill to get a per meal price and figure out the daycare percentage. I have done it different ways and given my current family situation it works out to about 50% of my grocery bill is daycare since it is just my husband who doesn't take a lunch to work, myself and one child at home. Remember if you order out for pizza that can be added to the grocery total since it accounts for 1-2 meals or add the meals served up weekly and jut don't count only a snack for a pizza meal (the assumption being you had a drink or dessert from food already in the house). It sounds a lot more complicated then it is but the key is that as long as you can substantiate that you used some sort of method consistently for the year to determine your claim then your claim will likely hold up in an audit.
If you are buying items specifically for the daycare, but checking out on one bill; separate the items at the register, and get the cashier to "sub-total" in between. It creates a visible division on the receipt, on which you can indicate which purchase was personal and which was for the daycare.
That said; I also just claim a portion of everything. :)
The $7-10 that a couple of you speak of ... is that per child, per day?? And that would be a total for breakfast/lunch/snacks I'm guessing??
We have been told in many workshops given by revenue canada that you can not just use an arbitrary per day amount for meals that you have to use your bills/menu and determine based on specifics. I know in the US they have the per day option but we don't. Yes some of you will say that is what your accountant did and it was accepted but that also means the government accepted the amount you claimed for food and didn't audit you to find out how you arrived at that figure since if they did you would have had to show how you got to the $7 a day claim.
Do you mean that we have to calculate what we spent each day? Or do you mean that you have to calculate an average and then use that as your per day amount? I have menus and I have reciepts, but I am not sure how to go about figuring out how much each meal cost for each child...this seems very complicated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by playfelt
It is always going to be a guess in some ways. One option is to write out a typical menu and then cost that out for a total, divide by the number of people served and that will give you the average per person and then multiply that by the total number of meals served.
Another option is to add up all of the grocery bills and divide by the number of people that served and then multiply by the number of kids served.
In a pinch when I was running behind the times I took 2 months worth of grocery bills and just used those with the formula. Once I did meals all the ways to see which one was to my advantage and there was less than a $150 difference from one method to the other which is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things since it will never be a precise science.
To do the cost per day method doing the menu will be your best. Make up a 3-6 week menue based on what you normally served and then cost it out. You probably do more repetition that you think in the sense of every Monday could be hamburg with something so one week with noodles and spagetti sauce, week two with box of hamburg helper, week three as meatloaf, etc. After you have done it a couple years you will figure out which method is the easiest for you.
If you use excell you can easily input the amount on the grocery receipts and add the formula totals the columns for you. The daily amount will vary for each person based on what they serve and that is why you can't use the arbitrary per day amount. The $7 is that red flag type of number in the sense that if you are claiming expenses a lot above that they will question you but you can claim pretty much anything below that and be ok it's just that you have be able to show them how you arrived at the number you are using should you be audited. That is the total key - no audit and any method works - get audited and you run the risk of being denied claims.
I order my daycare groceries through an online grocery service, that was it is all on one bill and easy to figure out.
A big issue is when you are feeding some of your own children as part of the daycare group because the food you feed your own is not claimable - only the daycare child portion so that adds a new calculation to the mix.
I have only been doing daycare for a few months so I'm not sure if I am doing this right. I buy my groceries each week, and buy my daycare stuff right along with my families groceries. I save the receipt and use a highlighter to cross off the items that are for daycare use. Save the receipts and put it in the slot marked 'groceries' in a folder and will give to my accountant come tax time.
I do that too, but I go through the receipt and cross off personal items, then do a total of all the things that are left and write it at the top of the receipt with the date and keep all receipts just in case.