I'm assisting a county fire department in reducing the tax consequences of incentive payments/expense reimbursements to volunteer firefighters. Currently, the county pays taxable "per call" incentive payments to volunteers. We are considering changing to a system of mileage reimbursement to be paid under an accountable plan.
The county houses fire apparatus at fire stations that are manned by full time paid firefighters. Volunteers, who supplement the paid crews, respond, when paged, from their homes or places of business or employment, to the fire station, or directly to the incident scene. The volunteers are included on station personnel rosters for administrative purposes, but have no station duty hours, and no assigned station duties, other than to retrieve, operate, return, and refit apparatus and equipment.
We are of the opinion that a volunteer's mileage from home/business/employment directly to incident scene would be fully reimbursable. Our question is, would mileage from home/business/employment to the fire station be considered commuting mileage, or would it also be reimbursable?