If you temporarily travel away from your tax home, you can use this
chapter to determine if you have deductible travel expenses. This
chapter defines "tax home,""temporary assignment," and
"travel expenses," including the "standard meal allowance."
It also discusses the rules for travel inside and outside the United
States, luxury water travel, and deductible convention expenses.
Travel expenses defined.
For tax purposes, travel expenses are the ordinary and necessary
expenses of traveling away from home for your business, profession, or
job. However, you cannot deduct expenses that are lavish or
extravagant. See, later, What Travel Expenses Are Deductible?
You will find examples of deductible travel expenses in Table
1, later.
Traveling away from home.
You are traveling away from home if:
- Your duties require you to be away from the general area of
your tax home (defined later) substantially longer than an ordinary
day's work, and
- You need to get sleep or rest to meet the demands of your
work while away from home.
This rest requirement is not satisfied by merely napping in
your car. You do not have to be away from your tax home for a whole
day or from dusk to dawn as long as your relief from duty is long
enough to get necessary sleep or rest.
Example 1.
You are a railroad conductor. You leave your home terminal on a
regularly scheduled round-trip run between two cities and return home
16 hours later. During the run, you have 6 hours off at your
turnaround point where you eat two meals and rent a hotel room to get
necessary sleep before starting the return trip. You are considered to
be away from home, and you can deduct travel expenses.
Example 2.
You are a truck driver. You leave your terminal and return to it
later the same day. You get an hour off at your turnaround point to
eat. Because you are not off to get necessary sleep and the brief time
off is not an adequate rest period, your trip is not considered as
travel away from home. You cannot deduct travel expenses.
Tax Home
What Travel Expenses Are Deductible?
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