If you travel for business you know that sometimes it can take you on a new adventure to unknown places that you may like to explore a little more. If you take advantage of organizing your schedule correctly you may be able to get the most of your business trip by mixing in some pleasure.
In order to take advantage of this you will have to make sure you spend enough days doing actual business so you can deduct your travel expenses. You will have to spend over half of the days conducting business domestically and over 75% of the time on overseas international trips.
Just four hours of work is considered a work day, what you do for the rest of the day does not matter. As long as you put in at least four hours of work you can figure out how much of a percentage of you trip is used for business in order to determine your eligibility for deduction. For each day you work you can deduct the cost of hotels, meals and other expenses related to work, even if you only spend four hours a day working.
One way to take advantage of business trips is by making sure you work at little as it is necessary to be eligible for the deduction. In order to do this you may want to arrange your schedule so you only work four hours each business day when possible. You may also be able to spread out your business over the length of your trip so that you have business activity each day. Other options such as using slower transportation, since travel days count as business days. Drive when you can, as opposed to flying to maximize your travel and your deductions, doing this does not violate any tax codes.
The IRS says that days between your work days that you take off can be counted as business days if it is cheaper to spend time at the business location then to return home. So if you have to work on Friday and again on Monday, you can count the weekend as two business days even if you didn’t perform any work.
Any personal expenses incurred when you stop at different locations not related to your business are not eligible for deduction. For example if you stop at a tourist location on your way to a meeting in another town you may not be able to deduction any expenses incurred there since they are not part of the expense of conducting business.
