Hope Y'all are enjoying a nice summer. My crew is busy getting ready for our tour and had a meeting with our accountant tonight. And now I'm more confused than ever. My question is this... (And feel free to stop reading right there if you want the short version.)

How much, per mile, would you say it costs to run a 96 Marathon with a 6 speed series 60? Fuel, oil changes, regular maintanence stuff. (Not major repairs, etc.) I tend to get about 7.25 MPG

The question of mileage came up. Our accountant said that since it is likely our bus is fully depreciated that the easy way to do this would be the the Montana LLC (Which I own, and in turn owns the bus) could rent my musical group (of which I own a percentage) the bus for the year. Same thing for my partners as well. The accountant said we could charge $70 a day for "lodging" and 50.5 cents a mile for mileage. I'm pretty sure that with fuel at $5 a gallon that I'm not coming even close here. Tour is 40,000 miles and approximately 270 nights on the road. I'll admit that I have a rather simplistic way that I think this kind of stuff SHOULD work... Like, I'll go out and play lots of concerts and sell lots of CDs and get my share of the loot.... and I'll pay for fuel and insurance and oil changes, and then I'll deduct my costs from my earnings and only pay tax on my net earnings.

Anybody out there that would be willing to explain this to me? I just came from 3 hour meeting with our accountant and I feel like I had better be understanding this stuff just a little better before I sign up for this route.

Thanks in advance. And by the way, all you guys who suggested AAP in Virginia for Cruisair service... I talked to Johnny on the phone and was super impressed. What a nice guy. I'll be paying him a visit later this summer. Thanks for the good tip!

All my best,

Adam