Business Travel expense question?

Question

Travel expense question?
I work for a company located at location A. One of the customers we have is located at location B. I was assigned to go to location B for service work, 2 days per week. The contract is for one year. My company is telling me that Location B has become my home base. Which means that I will not get paid for travel to location B.?
We have other customers at locations C, D and E. I go to these locations as needed during the remaining 3 days in the week.
My question is:
How should the company reimburse me for travel expenses to locations C, D and E.? Locations C, D and E are closer to A (company's location), than my home

Answer 1

Whatever the company reimburses you for, just keep track of it. It has no bearing on how you figure your taxes.

What is your usual place of work? Is it at Location A? If so, then you have a "temporary assignment." All travel to your temporary assignment is deductible. In addition, travel to locations C, D, and E is also deductible. So in fact, all your mileage is deductible at 48.5 cents per mile for 2007 (except trips from home to location A and back). Keep very good records in case your return is examined.

If you consider location B to be your normal place of work, since you spend most of your time there, then all mileage except mileage from home to B and from B to home is deductible. In particular, travel to location A now becomes deductible.

When you fill out Form 2106, you will subtract any pretax reimbursement your employer gave you for mileage in figuring your deduction. Transfer the total to Schedule A and deduct as unreimbursed employee expenses, subject to a 2% of adjusted gross income floor.

Answer 2

Company reimbursement policies are between the company and the employee, not a matter of their being legally obligated to reimburse you for ANYTHING.

If you have employee business expenses that are not reimbursed, you might be able to deduct them on your tax return. You can only deduct them if you itemize, and then can only deduct the amount that is over 2% of your adjusted gross income.

Answer 3

They are trying to play games. You can submit any mileage you incur from your home to sites you have to work at, and if you have to stay over - get re-imbursed for that. Just because they declare one jobsite as homebase - doesn't negate their responsibility to reimburse expenses to stay there if it is a great distance from your home.