Taxes, 1099s, and what LoadTally doesn’t do
It keeps the numbers straight all year and hands them over. It does not file anything.
LoadTally is not tax software. It doesn't file anything, doesn't figure what you owe, and won't pretend to. What it does is keep the numbers straight all year, so whoever does your taxes gets clean pages instead of a bag of receipts.
Drivers and 1099s
Most owner-operators' drivers are independent contractors. Nothing is withheld from their pay, and at year end each one gets a 1099 with the total they were paid. LoadTally's year-to-date page shows that total per driver, built from the pay runs you marked paid, so the number is the one you actually sent.
Money paid back for a driver's receipts — the diesel they bought at the pump, a toll, a wash — is not in that 1099 figure. It is a reimbursement of the company's costs, not pay, so it has its own column beside it, and on your profit and loss it counts as your expense under its own pile rather than as driver pay.
Whether a driver is a contractor or an employee is a question for your accountant, not for an app. LoadTally keeps the record either way.
What the accountant asks for
- Profit and loss per truck — what it brought in, what it cost to run, what was left — by week, month or year.
- Expenses sorted into their piles: fuel, repairs, tires, plates, insurance, tolls, with the total at the bottom of each.
- Miles for the year, by truck and by driver.
- Driver pay for the year, per driver.
Every report prints, saves as a PDF or a spreadsheet, or goes to the accountant as a link that opens without a sign-in.
What to put aside
Nobody takes tax out of an owner-operator's profit or a 1099 driver's pay, so the IRS wants a payment four times a year — by April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15. Put aside for taxes (under Reports for the owner, on My taxes for a driver) works out about how much: self-employment tax and income tax at your own rate, with every step shown, and your days away from home taken off as per diem, counted from your loads.
Your rate and your days are yours alone — the owner never sees a driver's, and the accountant's sign-in doesn't open the owner's. It is an estimate to set money aside by; the accountant can tell you the safe amount to send.
Fuel
Fuel bought on the carrier's card is taken off your settlement and is your expense; it is never a driver pay item and never paid back to the driver. Fuel a driver paid for at the pump with their own money is a receipt on the load — approved, it is paid back on their next run, it is not their income, and it sits in the fuel pile with the rest. Either way it lands in the books once.
What it won't do
- File a return, quarterly or otherwise — it tells you about what to put aside, and you or your accountant send it.
- Figure your fuel tax by state, or your heavy-vehicle use tax.
- Produce the 1099 forms themselves — it gives you the totals to put on them.
- Tell you what you can deduct.
Those are the accountant's job, and the point of LoadTally is that they get to do it from a clean set of pages in an afternoon, instead of a weekend.