Tax Savings Tips - July 2021
Is Your Travel Day Personal or a Tax-Deductible Business Day? When you travel to a business location where you spend the night, you are in travel status. But will the tax rules make this a business or personal night? The rules also affect your costs during the day. When you have an overnight business travel day, you generally deduct your costs of sustaining life for the day, such as breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks, lodging, and taxis. Business days also are important in determining how much of your travel cost you may deduct. For example, on a seven-day trip to London, one business day makes the airfare deductible. Yep, you heard that right. Six personal days and one business day in London—you deduct 100 percent of the airfare. Transportation days are the trickiest days. Days spent traveling to or returning from a destination outside the United States are treated as business days—provided you use a “reasonably direct route” and you don’t eng