How To Pay Less For Your Summer Vacation

The summer travel season is almost upon us. While you look forward to lazing on the beach, visiting the theme parks, and enjoying ice cream cones, also consider ways to fit some business in to your trips.
The idea is to take advantage of tax deductions for which you become eligible when you devote part of your trip to business. As long as most of your travel days are for business purposes, you can deduct the cost of travel (airplanes, trains, cars, etc.) and for hotels, parking, taxi service, meals, and so on.
As defined by the IRS, travel expenses are the Ordinary and Necessary expenses of traveling away from home for your business, profession, or job. An Ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your field of trade, business, or profession. A Necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your business. An expense does not have to be required to be considered necessary.

The key factor is that your trip must be primarily for business. Days of leisure can be added to a trip and still be considered primarily for business. The more days and time per day spent on business will help substantiate the trip. There are no set rules on how many days and how much time per day need to be spent on business for your trip to be considered business related.
Keep all the documentation for business-related travel, including confirmations of appointments, emails, phone records, registration to conferences, etc. The days spent traveling to and from a business trip are considered part of the trip. This includes the weekend if it is impractical to come home between weekday business meetings. Planning ahead can make this happen.

Traveling with Your Spouse

If a spouse goes with you on a business trip or to a business convention, his or her travel expenses can only be deducted if your spouse

1. is your employee,
2. has a bona fide business purpose for the travel, and
3. would otherwise be allowed to deduct the travel expenses.