My friend is a local driver, yet claimed max per diem on taxes. Legal?

No not legal if he returns to same place every night. Logging sleeper does not matter. If audited he will pay.

 

https://www.jacksonhewitt.com/Resource-Center/Deductions-at-work/Truck-Driver/562/

You must determine the location of your tax home before you can determine whether you are traveling away from it.

• Generally, your tax home is your regular place of business. It does not matter where you live.
• Your tax home includes the entire city or general area in which your business or work is located.
• If you have more than one regular place of business, your tax home is your main place of business.
• If you do not have a regular or a main place of business because of the nature of your work, your tax home may be the place where you regularly live.
• If you do not have a regular place of business or post of duty and there is no place where you regularly live, you are considered a transient and your tax home is wherever you work

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...7pZLbmhwpUyhQu4HA&sig2=yygxyfPslPcU0p63kvK-bg

 

I think there is a possibility of a audit here.

We take per diem only on service days logged more than 120 miles from home. The physical address. In 2001 it came to 306 days for two people filing jointly. The Per diem that year came to around 13700 to throw against taxes on 65K. It made for a windfall year. That was the one of few years that Uncle Sam pretty much took care of our entire annual food budget and laid a groundwork for a new pile of savings for the coming year of trucking.

Logbooks are held 8 years against a audit in case it becomes necessary to prove each of the 306 days claimed to be logged more than 120 miles from our physical home address.

 

I don't see anything wrong with what he's doing as he is not raising any flags. If you feel he is cheating the gov't send them a donation and they will no doubt spend wisely

 

Really, it is called tax fraud.

It is a crime.

He gets into an audit, it will without a doubt it will be a disallowed deduction because he will ask to prove this and they will ask the company to provide the pick up and delivery points to see if he is lying, then he will get hit with a fine, have to pay interest going back to the year of the return and the taxes that were supposed to be paid.

 

Illegal but who really cares, I'm sure they could find something iffy on all of our tax returns if they really wanted.(I've had some iffy years) lol if half the country actually paid taxes the tax burden wouldnt hurt us working folk so hard.. scrap the earned income bs and throw a flat tax rate across the board and maybe I wouldn't get a little stingy when it came time to pay Uncle Sam...

 

... obviously illegal lol

 

I am all for someone getting one over on the government. Kudos to that man!