Business travel expenses deduction?

Question

hello

i was there for 3 months

can i deduct busines travel expenses for a period of 2 / 3 months?

and can i deduct meals, hotels, mobile phone and transportation expenses?

i was in 3 star hotels so not expensive hotels ($50,00/day)

thanks

Answer 1

See publication 463.

You can deduct transportation, lodging, 50% of meals, etc. if you were away from your tax home on trips that lasted less than one year.

You must have the receipts for everything but the food.  For food you can use either actual receipts or the state department's per diem rate.

Obviously if your company reimburses you, you don't get to deduct the money twice.

If you are your own company and you can prove that the purpose of the trip was all business (the pub covers this), you can deduct this.

The reason you can deduct 100% of lodging and only 50% of food is that the tax law says if you are away from home, you are duplicating your housing expense, but no matter where you are, you still have to eat.  The 50% is to ease the fact that the expense is in a restaurant.

Surely you kept copies of your itinerary, the names, addresses and phone numbers of the people you worked with, etc.  Your goal in the event of an audit is to show that it was a business trip, even if you did buy anything from them.

You need to be able to show why the trip took 2+ months.  Two months seems like there was time for a vacation in there--and vacations aren't deductible.

Answer 2

Where is there?  And, what were you doing there?  Did you take along anyone else?  Were there elements of a vacation in the trip?  Did you actually do business?  How much of it was business?  Answer these questions and get back to us.

One question you didn't answer was whether there was an element of vacation to your trip.  To be deductible, according to the IRS, you must be able to prove that there was a bona fide business purpose of the trip.  Then only the portion that is attributable to that business portion is deductible.  

This IRS site explains excellently just what their rules are pertaining to all travel, both foreign and domestic.