Airline Crew Tax Center
Plain-English answers about airline crew taxes, built from the federal rules themselves and linked straight back to them.
Two crew members can fly the same trips all year and read different rules. What changes the rules is whether the law treats you as an employee or as someone in business for themselves, and whether you have a tax home you travel away from.
Pick the seat you work in and we will show the rules written for that situation. Or go straight to the question you came here with.
What the rules say
Employee, or in business for yourself
The form on which pay is reported records how a payer treated the engagement. It is a fact about the reporting, not a determination of worker class, and an occupational title is not a determination either.
Employee, or in business for yourself — If the law treats you as an employee
For an employee, the deductions that would have been miscellaneous itemized deductions are disallowed. Public Law 119-21 struck the end date from the suspension in section 67 and redesignated it, so the disallowance applies to taxable years beginning after 2017 with no expiry, effective for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025. Publication 529 states that the only remaining routes for unreimbursed employee expenses are the named statutory categories: Armed Forces reservists, qualified performing artists, fee-basis state or local government officials, employees with impairment-related work expenses, and certain qualified educator expenses. No retrieved authority places flight crew in any of those categories.
Employee, or in business for yourself — If the law treats you as being in business for yourself
For a person carrying on a trade or business rather than performing services as an employee, section 162 allows the ordinary and necessary expenses of carrying on that trade or business, and the disallowance of miscellaneous itemized deductions does not reach those expenses. Whether a particular engagement is a trade or business rather than employment is the classification question itself, which this phase does not decide.
Where your tax home is
A tax home is generally the regular place of business or post of duty, regardless of where a family home is maintained, and it includes the entire city or general area in which the work is located. Where there is more than one place of work, the main place is identified by the total time ordinarily spent in each place, the level of business activity in each place, and whether the income from each place is significant.
Where there is no regular or main place of business or post of duty because of the nature of the work, the tax home may be the place where the person regularly lives. Where there is neither, Publication 463 describes an itinerant, whose tax home is wherever the work is, and who is never treated as travelling away from home.
An assigned crew base or domicile is a scheduling fact recorded by an employer. No retrieved authority states that an assignment to a base establishes a tax home, and no retrieved authority states that a residence establishes one either. Both remain facts to be weighed against the factors the authority actually names.
Getting yourself to base
The cost of travelling between a home and a main or regular place of work is a personal expense. Regulation 1.262-1(b)(5) states that commuting costs do not qualify as deductible expenses, and Publication 463 adds that this does not change with the distance between the home and the regular place of work, and does not change because work is performed during the trip. Nothing in the retrieved authority makes an exception for travel taken by air, on a non-revenue seat, or at any particular frequency.
What we are not saying here
Still being read
These are the questions we have not finished reading the authority for. They stay listed here until we have, and until then we do not state an answer.
- Which authority states the test that separates an employee from an independent contractor, in terms this project may quote?
Where this comes from
Every statement above comes from one of these. Each link goes to the official text, with the body that issued it and the date we read it.
- 26 U.S.C. § 62 — Adjusted gross income definedUnited States Code (GPO, govinfo) · 2023 edition · read 2026-08-16
- 26 U.S.C. § 162 — Trade or business expensesUnited States Code (GPO, govinfo) · 2023 edition · read 2026-08-16
- Public Law 119-21, section 70110 — Termination of miscellaneous itemized deductions other than educator expensesUnited States Congress (GPO, govinfo) · enacted 2025; applies to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025 · read 2026-08-16
- 26 U.S.C. § 67 — 2-percent floor on miscellaneous itemized deductionsUnited States Code (GPO, govinfo) · 2023 edition (pre-Public Law 119-21 text) · read 2026-08-16 · superseded text, kept for history
- IRS Publication 529 — Miscellaneous DeductionsInternal Revenue Service · current online revision · read 2026-08-16
- IRS Publication 463 — Travel, Gift, and Car ExpensesInternal Revenue Service · current online revision (page last reviewed 30-Apr-2026) · read 2026-08-16
- 26 C.F.R. § 1.162-2 — Traveling expensesElectronic Code of Federal Regulations · current eCFR · read 2026-08-16
- 26 U.S.C. § 262 — Personal, living, and family expensesUnited States Code (GPO, govinfo) · 2023 edition · read 2026-08-16
- 26 C.F.R. § 1.262-1 — Personal, living, and family expensesElectronic Code of Federal Regulations · current eCFR · read 2026-08-16