First of all, the prior question and answer is completely out of date. W-2 employees are not allowed to deduct any work related expenses. That deduction was eliminated in the 2018 tax cut. The above question and answer has a 2019 date because that’s when it was transferred to the current support website from a previous website.
For self-employed, you can deduct the actual cost of your lodging, the actual cost of your transportation, and 50% of your meals, or 50% of the Federal meal per diem; if the travel was for work, was temporary, and was outside of the geographic area of your tax home.
As far as depreciation is concerned, I am pretty sure that if you put property in service for your business, and then take it out of service for your business in less than six months, you can’t deduct any depreciation. Even if you could take depreciation, you would be placing the property in service at its fair market value at the time, and then taking 1/3 of one year out of 27.5 years as the depreciation, or approximately 1% of its fair market value. @Hal_Al can you comment further?
