Article: Business or Pleasure -- Maximizing the Tax Benefits of Travel


	Jeff Bither

September 2007

Business or pleasure? Maximizing the tax benefits of travel

Successfully mixing in vacation time with your legitimate business trips is largely a matter of timing and planning

Although business is business and pleasure is pleasure, the world rarely adheres to absolutes. Thus, at any time of year you may want to mix some vacation days with your business travel. With a little planning, you can get Uncle Sam to help subsidize your downtime.

If you go on a business trip within the U.S. and add on some vacation days, you know you can deduct some of your expenses. The only question is how much.

First, let’s cover just the pure transportation expenses. By this, we mean the costs of getting to and from the scene of your business activity, which includes travel to and from your departure airport, airfare, baggage tips, cabs to and from the destination airport, and so forth. Costs for rail travel or to drive your personal car also fit into this category. The bottom line is that your domestic transportation costs are 100% deductible as long as the primary reason for the trip is business. On the other hand, if vacation is the primary reason for your travel, none of your transportation expenses are deductible, even if some of your time is business-related.

The IRS doesn’t specify how to determine whether the primary reason for domestic travel is business. In most cases, the number of days spent on business versus pleasure is the key factor. The rules covering foreign travel provide that your travel days count as business days, as do weekends and holidays if they fall between days devoted to business and it would be impractical to return home. “Standby days,” when your physical presence is required, also count as business days, even if you’re not called upon to work on those days. Any other day principally devoted to business activities during normal business hours is also counted as a business day, and so are days when you intended to work but could not, due to reasons beyond your control (local transportation difficulties, power failure, etc.).

For domestic trips, you should be able to claim that business was the primary reason for a sojourn whenever the business days exceed the personal days. Be sure to accumulate proof about this and keep the proof with your tax records. For example, if your trip is made to attend client meetings, log everything on your daily planner and copy the pages for your tax file. If you attend a convention or training seminar, keep the program and take some notes to show you attended the sessions.

Once you reach your destination, your out-of-pocket expenses (lodging, hotel tips, 50% of meals, seminar and convention fees, cab fare, etc.) for business days are fully deductible. Expenses for personal days are nondeductible (except in the “Saturday night stay-over” situation discussed later).

Example 1: You are a sole proprietor. You arrange a Wednesday morning business meeting with a client in San Francisco. You fly out Sunday evening and spend all day Monday sight-seeing. You spend most of Tuesday preparing for the meeting. On Wednesday you attend the meeting, take the client to lunch, and catch your return flight home. Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday count as business days. The business meeting obviously necessitated the trip, and you clearly didn’t spend an unreasonable amount of time on personal activities. Therefore, you can deduct your airline tickets, plus your lodging for Sunday and Tuesday nights, 50% of your meals for Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, your other out-of-pocket expenses for those days, and 50% of the cost of lunching with your client.

Saturday Night Stay-Over. A great way to maximize deductions for the personal portions of a trip is with a Saturday night stay-over that reduces the overall cost of the trip. If you can show that staying the extra day or two costs less (or no more) than coming back home immediately after the business meeting is over, the IRS allows you to deduct your additional meal and lodging expenses (subject to the 50% rule for meals) for the extra day(s). Naturally, you still must have a predominantly business purpose for making the trip in the first place. Be sure to document that your airfare savings equaled or exceeded the out-of-pocket costs of staying the extra day(s). Keep the proof with your tax records.

Example 2: You have a business meeting in New York on Monday morning. You and your spouse fly into town Saturday morning and spend the weekend seeing the sights. Your round-trip airfare is only $400, versus $1,200 if you had flown in Sunday night and left Monday. In this situation, Saturday is a personal day since you would normally fly in Sunday. No problem. As long as your meal and lodging expenses for Saturday are no more than $800, you can write-off your whole trip (subject to the 50% rule for meals). Of course, you generally can’t deduct the additional costs for your spouse (his or her airfare and meals and any extra charges for having two people instead of one in the hotel room), and you can’t deduct purely personal expenses such as theatre or ballgame tickets. Still, this is a good deal, tax-wise.

Based in Mesa, Arizona, and serving closely held businesses in the East Valley, the Phoenix area and throughout Arizona, Schmidt Westergard & Company, PLLC, is an independent full-service tax, audit, accounting and business advisory firm focusing on the middle market.