Per diem Question

You are not receiving any extra money if you are on the per diem plan. A portion of your CPM is not taxable. You're right, 0 miles = 0 per diem. Under the DOT standard rate plan, you're away from home and they will allow you the daily $64? rate X 80%. It doesn't matter if you move or not. You cannot combine both plans when you file your taxes. Unless you have about 200 days on the road the DOT rate may not work for you.

 

If things go the way I plan ,when I start driving I expect to be spending 300+ days on the road. I think the way I will go is have a tax pro do the taxes first time that way I will know what to do when I do them on my own in years to come.

 

Non-taxable? Really?

IRS Publication 463 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf) would appear to differ.

"An arrangement that repays you for business expenses by reducing the amount reported as your wages, salary, or other pay will be treated as a nonaccountable plan. This is because you are entitled to receive the full amount of your pay whether or not you have any business expenses."

"Reimbursements treated as paid under nonaccountable plans are reported as pay."

I'm aware that truckers under the HOS rules get a sweet standard meal deduction, but per diem pay, and tax deductions, are two different things.

 

Are the W2s supposed to show how much per diem we recieved if on a company perdiem plan?.

Mine only shows taxable income which is less than the YTD gross on my last statement.

I dont know exactly how much perdiem pay i received and kinda think that would be good to know.

 

Yes if you receive per diem from your company as untaxed income it should show how much. Look on back of w2 at the letters for the misc boxes and find the appropriate box.

 

One thing to remember is that if your per diem is not enough combined with other deductions then you won't claim it and will instead claim the standard deduction for me it was 9300 this year and I worked for a company that paid per diem. For 6 mo then switched and other did not so I did not have enough per diem to claim to surpass the 9300

 

Couldn't find anything related to per Diem or employee expenses. Only thing showing in box 12 is code DD which is the cost of employer sponsored health coverage.

I'm dealing with a mortgage broker now who seems to only consider my wages as stated on W2. If I could find my per Diem pay I could present that and see if it could be taken into consideration by the mortgage company.

 

The trucking company only reimburses you a portion of the what the IRS allows for a the truck driver's daily per diem. As such they consider it accountable (vs nonaccountable ) reimbursement and not taxed.

 

Right––last night I came across the relevant passage in Pub 463 that fully fleshes out what you are saying. In the "Per Diem and Car Allowances" section on p. 31, it reads:

"If your employer reimburses you for your expenses using a per diem or a car allowance, you can generally use the allowance as proof for the amount of your expenses. A per diem or car allowance satisfies the adequate accounting requirements for the amount of your expenses only if all the following conditions apply.

1. Your employer reasonably limits payments of your expenses to those that are ordinary and necessary in the conduct of the trade or business.

2. The allowance is similar in form to and not more than the federal rate (defined later).

3. You prove the time (dates), place, and business purpose of your expenses to your employer (as explained in Table 5-1) within a reasonable period of time.

4. You aren’t related to your employer (as defined next). If you are related to your employer, you must be able to prove your expenses to the IRS even if you have already adequately accounted to your employer and returned any excess reimbursement."

All four of these do apply to truckers (that don't happen to be related to their employers anyway), so trucker per diem does appear to fall into the accountable category as you say.

However I'm still a little confused about the taxability of per diem pay in general. Today I posted a comment here

Question on Per Diem ? Paying it back

that describes a scenario in which it would seem anyway, that per diem pay would need to be reported on your federal tax return as income.