Business or Personal Travel and can this be deducted ?

Apr 16, 2007 1 Replies

Can Travel Expenses be deducted when the trip was for work that involves personal time? I am employed by a large church as a religious coordinator. A couples group from church was going to Italy on a retreat. One month before they were to leave, the pastor informed me about the retreat that I did not know about, and told me that he would like for me to go along since this was a large group. The priest was the director for the retreat.



I said could go, but upon seeing the price told him I could not and after talking to my husband (who would not be going). The priests at the church talked about and decided that they could pay for 1/3 from a fund they had it I paid the remainder.



This was a 21 day trip, On my time sheet some of the time was recorded as vacation and the remainder as working in Italy.



The stipulation in the trip was that I would serve as the priest's assistant if situations took place since I am a coordinator at the parish.



Can any of my expenses be taken on my tax return ?



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You arguably had a deduction for all your unreimbursed costs as out-of- pocket employee business expenses. From your facts you would not have been in Italy except for your job requirements. It would help if you spent at least 4 hours on job related duties on each of 11 different days (where travel days to and from Europe count as 2 of those 11 days). More aggressively you have, in my opinion, a good case for deducting your unreimbursed church related costs as charitable contributions. I realize charitable organizations and churchs ofter have severe budget constraints, but both making you pay for a significant fraction of the costs yourself AND having you use vacation days on this trip seems egregious. Moderator: If you have not filed or filed an extension, file an extension NOW and discuss this with a local tax pro. I am in complete agreement with every part of the above response.

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