Per diem pay: how much do you actually take home?

If you are making .40 per mile and you put .10 to per diem, you would have taxes deducted from .30 per mile.
The other .10 per mile would be paid to you tax free. (And probably minus a bit for administration fees)
That means your pay check each week would be a bit more.

Your earned income (come tax time) would reflect the .30 per mile, but not the .10 in per diem.
Such being the case, if you applied for a loan your earnings would be based on the smaller .30 amount - not the .40 that you are actually making.
Add to that, the social security taxes would be based on that smaller amount so your social security payments when you retire would also be smaller.

 

I've always put per diem in the 'other income' box.

 

Per Diem is considered reimbursement and thus not taxed. You will bring home more today due to less taxation as others have said, but it will bite you on the back end.

 

To include it in taxable income and then be able to claim the proper per diem deduction at the end?

 

No. I meant if I were applying to borrow money.

 

This is what I've made to date as of this Friday for 2017. The top number is my gross, the bottom number is minus the amount I don't get taxed on. My company takes out $315 per check that I'm not taxed on. Then puts it back in my check. It's a significant difference. There are tax benefits to the company for taking per diem out. My company doesn't give us a choice. And you'll see in the comments the hate by those who feel myself and others are idiots for staying with a company that forces drivers to take per diem.

 

The tax benefit to your employer is that their payroll tax burden is lowered by the amount of per diem... In the example given above, .40 with .10 paid as per diem, that's a 25% decrease in their tax burden. That's huge.

This is why many do it.

 

That wouldn't make sense anyway. I subtract my per diem from the federal deduction and claim the difference on my tax return.

As stated, companies save big money on payroll taxes using per diem.