What this line means
The cost of overnight business travel away from your tax home. This includes airfare, hotel, train, taxi/rideshare, baggage fees, tips, laundry while traveling, and other necessary travel expenses. Your tax home is your regular place of business, not where you live. Day trips that do not require sleep or rest are not travel — they are transportation costs that go elsewhere. Meals during business travel go on line 24b, not here.
Does this apply to you?
- You flew or drove to a client meeting, conference, or job site that required an overnight stay
- You attended a professional conference or trade show in another city
- You traveled to meet suppliers, inspect products, or visit business partners
- You paid for hotels, flights, or train tickets for business purposes
- You traveled to a temporary work location away from your regular business location
Easy to overlook
Mixed business and personal travel If you extend a business trip by a few personal days, the airfare is still fully deductible if the primary purpose of the trip was business. Hotel and meal costs for the personal days are not deductible. For international trips, the rules are stricter — if you spend more than 25% of the total days on personal activities, you must allocate the airfare between business and personal use. 1 IRS Publication 463 — Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
Temporary vs. indefinite work locations Travel to a temporary work location (expected to last one year or less) is deductible. Travel to an indefinite work location (expected to last more than one year) is not — that location becomes your tax home. If a project you expected to last 8 months extends to 14 months, your travel deductions stop being deductible once it becomes clear the assignment will exceed one year. 2 Audit pattern — personal travel disguised as business travel
Watch out for this
Deducting travel to a vacation destination where you conducted a small amount of business. The IRS applies a “primary purpose” test — if the trip was primarily personal with some business mixed in, the travel costs are not deductible. Attending a one-hour meeting during a week-long beach vacation does not make the trip a business expense.
Footnotes
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IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf ↩
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IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, Business vs. Personal. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf ↩