Hello n 1elkyfan,
Transportation expenses include the ordinary and necessary costs of all of the following.
-
Getting from one workplace to another in the course of your business or profession when you are traveling within the city
or general area that is your tax home.
Tax home
is defined in chapter 1.
-
Visiting clients or customers.
-
Going to a business meeting away from your regular workplace.
-
Getting from your home to a temporary workplace when you have one or more regular places of work. These temporary workplaces
can be either within the area of your tax home or outside that area.
Transportation expenses do not include expenses you have while traveling away from home overnight. Those expenses are travel
expenses discussed in
chapter 1
. However, if you use your car while traveling away from home overnight, use the rules in this chapter to figure your car
expense deduction. See
Car Expenses
, later.
Daily transportation expenses you incur while traveling from
home to one or more regular places of business are generally
nondeductible commuting expenses. However, there may be
exceptions to this general rule. You can deduct daily transportation
expenses incurred going between your residence and a temporary
work station outside the metropolitan area where you live.
Also, daily transportation expenses can be deducted if: (1) you
have one or more regular work locations away from your residence
or (2) your residence is your principal place of business and
you incur expenses going between the residence and another work
location in the same trade or business, regardless of whether
the work is temporary or permanent and regardless of the distance.
Illustration of transportation expenses.
Figure B
, earlier, illustrates the rules that apply for deducting transportation expenses when you have a regular or main job away
from your home. You may want to refer to it when deciding whether you can deduct your transportation expenses.
Temporary work location.
If you have one or more regular work locations away
from your home and you commute to a temporary work location in
the same trade or business, you can deduct the expenses of the
daily round-trip transportation between your home and the temporary
location, regardless of distance.
If your employment at a work location is realistically
expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less,
the employment is temporary unless there are facts and
circumstances that would indicate otherwise.
If your employment at a work location is realistically
expected to last for more than 1 year or if there is no realistic
expectation that the employment will last for 1 year or less,
the employment is not temporary, regardless of whether it actually
lasts for more than 1 year.
If employment at a work location initially is
realistically expected to last for 1 year or less, but at some later
date the employment is realistically expected to last more than
1 year, that employment will be treated as temporary (unless
there are facts and circumstances that would indicate
otherwise) until your expectation changes. It will not be treated as
temporary after the date you determine it will last more than 1
year.
If the temporary work location is beyond the general
area of your regular place of work and you stay overnight, you
are traveling away from home. You may have deductible travel
expenses as discussed in
chapter 1
.
No regular place of work.
If you have no regular place of work but ordinarily
work in the metropolitan area where you live, you can deduct daily
transportation costs between home and a temporary work site
outside that metropolitan area.
Generally, a metropolitan area includes the area within
the city limits and the suburbs that are considered part of
that metropolitan area.
You cannot deduct daily transportation costs between
your home and temporary work sites within your metropolitan area.
These are nondeductible commuting expenses.
Two places of work.
If you work at two places in one day, whether or not
for the same employer, you can deduct the expense of getting
from one workplace to the other. However, if for some personal
reason you do not go directly from one location to the other,
you cannot deduct more than the amount it would have cost you
to go directly from the first location to the second.
Transportation expenses you have in going between home
and a part-time job on a day off from your main job are commuting
expenses. You cannot deduct them.
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p463/ch04.html
Hope this helps.
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Have a wonderful
day.
