Pilot taxes: what the federal rules say

What an assigned base is, when travel is on duty rather than a commute, what the meal limit does, and where the rule turns on your worker class.

The form your pay is reported on records how a payer treated the engagement. It does not decide whether the law treats you as an employee or as someone in business for themselves, and that is the part that changes your rules.

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.

Travelling away from your tax home

Travelling away from your tax home — Only once a tax home is established

Section 162(a)(2) allows traveling expenses, including amounts spent on meals and lodging that are not lavish or extravagant, only while away from home in the pursuit of a trade or business. Regulation 1.162-2 adds that only travelling expenses that are reasonable and necessary in the conduct of the business and directly attributable to it are within the allowance. Because the condition is being away from home, the location of the tax home is decided first.

Training, ratings and the medical

Regulation 1.162-5 separates education that maintains or improves skills required in an existing employment, trade or business, or that meets the express requirements of an employer or of applicable law as a condition of keeping an established employment relationship, status or rate of compensation, from education that is a personal or capital expenditure. Training taken to enter an occupation is a different question from training taken to keep qualifications current in one already carried on. The retrieved authority states no result for any particular certificate or medical requirement, and for an employee the current disallowance applies to unreimbursed costs regardless.

Proving it later

Travel, meal and lodging expenses are subject to the substantiation requirement in section 274(d) and the regulations under it. Records that establish where the work was performed, which periods were spent away from the tax home, and what an employer paid or reimbursed, are the records those provisions turn on. No specific record format is stated by the retrieved authority.

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.

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.

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