Reimbursing Business Travel Purchased with Mileage Rewards for Tax Filing

[ndc24075]

I recently went on a business trip and used mileage rewards from my personal airline mileage account to purchase my airfare, which was significantly cheaper than buying the ticket in cash. I transferred these rewards to my airline account from my credit card points, which my credit card company allows me to use as a method of deducting my credit card balance. Since the trip was for business purposes, I'm wondering if it's possible to reimburse myself for the airfare from my LLC, using a conversion rate of 1 mile to 1 cent, similar to the credit card company's value method. I want to make sure I can claim this as a business expense on my tax filing. Has anyone else been in a similar situation or have experience with this kind of reimbursement? I appreciate any advice or guidance on how to proceed.

[AliciaP1]

It's been my experience that as long as the travel expenses were ordinary and necessary and your cost measurement is reasonable (which it seems to be) you would be able to claim the expense.

You can see Topic No. 511 Business Travel Expenses for more information from the IRS on the topic.

[NCperson]

@AliciaP1 @ndc24075 - here is the problem with that advice.  

The points were never declared as income, so to turn around and charge some of the points to the business and take a deduction is problematic.  

the IRS has been clear for many, many years that the points are not taxable income,   So they can't be an expense in the manner suggested in the original post. 

Since the business (presumably) is "cash based" you must have a third party receipt showing the cash paid for the travel costs.  In this case any receipt is going to show zero.