Category Archives: Tax Home

When it Comes to Duplicated Expenses, its All About the Home / Dwelling

A lot of Travelers mistakenly think that paying rent is a magic carpet ride to a tax home. This is not the case. You must be maintaining a dwelling that you use for your own lodging. Paying rent and maintaining a home you pay rent for are different things. That means the following types of arrangements that some speak of do not rise to the level of a “maintaining a dwelling”:

  1. I give Mom some money
  2. I help out with expenses
  3. I pay a utility bill
  4. I help out when at home
  5. I help my aunt out by sending her money
  6. I pay for a storage unit
  7. A combination of the above

When its an arrangement with a related party, the entire package needs to look, smell and taste like a real rental OR an equitable sharing of expenses.

The court case linked below distinguishes #5 above from a real rental or maintenance of a home. As the discussion states, “[t]he reason for allowing deductions for expenses while away from home {and / or allow tax free reimbursements (per diems) is to mitigate the burden placed on taxpayers who, for business reasons, must maintain two places of abode”

In the case the taxpayer tried to use her benevolance payments to an aunt as proof of duplicated expenses.

Valdez v Commissioner

Trips Home During Assignments or Between Extensions

We are often asked about whether trips home are deductible during assignments or between extensions.

A trip home during an assignment is considered a personal expense by the IRS unless there is a business purpose for the journey. If one is returning home for work then most all of the trip is deductible, but if the return home is for personal reasons, then the deductions are limited to what would be deducted if the traveler stayed at the assignment area. For example, if one has an apartment at the assignment area, the lodging costs do not change however, the employee cannot deduct meal allowances when at home. The meal allowances are the only part that could have been deductible had the traveler stayed. If the meal allowance was $50/day and the employee when home for 4 days then $200 of transportation expenses for the journey home would be allowed

For reference, read the next to last paragraph of this ruling

Revenue Ruling 54-497 on Trips Home

I Do Not Want a Reimbursement!! Ill Deduct It On My Return Instead!!

Refusing Money

 

Want to decline tax free reimbursements for travel expenses and deduct them on your return instead? You cannot claim the deduction if you were offered or had access to an employer reimbursement..

Linked below is an old court case that is still cited in current cases involving an executive that refused to submit his expense reports to his company for reimbursement and then claimed the expenses on his return. The court denied his deduction because “he {was} attempting to convert the employer’s right to a deduction into a right of his own.”

60-1 USTC 9135 Marvin A Heidt and Beatrice Heidt Petitioners-Appellants v Commissioner of Internal Revenue

What is a Tax Home? Are you a Tax Turtle?

I have spent the last 20 years explaining the concept of a tax home to clients and those that claim to know more than the IRS. This is a very instructive and candid Tax Court case that uses more common vocabulary so non-attorney readers can understand. A good description of a tax home.

The case also focuses on a common practice among mobile professionals of using a friends or relatives home as a tax residence and what should be expected.

Also, the case introduces another term to the tax home vocabulary: it defines an itinerant – someone who does not have a fixed tax home – as a “Tax Turtle” 🙂

Enjoy

Shalom Jacobs v Commissioner

Tax Turtle