What this line means
Expenses for overnight business travel away from your tax home. Lodging, airfare, car rental, and other transport go in Column A. Meals while traveling go in Column B. Your tax home is your regular place of business, not necessarily where you live — if those differ, that distinction matters.
Does this apply to you?
- You traveled overnight for business and paid for lodging out of your own pocket
- You paid for flights, trains, or rental cars for business trips your employer did not reimburse
- You are an Armed Forces reservist who travels more than 100 miles from home for reserve duty
- You are a qualified performing artist who travels to out-of-town engagements
- You incurred meal expenses during overnight business travel
Easy to overlook
The “tax home” rule disqualifies some travel Your tax home is your regular place of business, not your personal residence. If you live in one city and work full-time in another, the work city is your tax home — and travel back home on weekends is not deductible business travel. Reservists and performing artists with multiple work locations should identify their tax home carefully before claiming travel expenses.1 IRS Publication 463 — Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
Incidental expenses count as travel costs Tips to hotel staff, dry cleaning during a business trip, and internet access charges at a hotel are deductible travel expenses. These small costs are easy to forget when tallying receipts. If you use the incidental-expenses-only rate ($5 per day for 2025), you can skip tracking individual tips and fees.2 IRS Form 2106 Instructions — Line 3
Watch out for this
Claiming travel expenses for trips that are primarily personal. If you combine business and personal travel, only the business portion is deductible. A five-day trip where two days are business meetings and three days are sightseeing means you deduct two days of lodging and meals, not five. The airfare may still be fully deductible if the primary purpose of the trip was business, but lodging and meals must be split by day.
Footnotes
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IRS Publication 463, Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses, Chapter 1. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf ↩
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IRS Form 2106 Instructions. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i2106 ↩