Business Vacations

Is a business vacation an oxymoron? Not if you plan it properly!

The trick is to sandwich your pleasure between your work. First you need to plan more workdays than days of pleasure. Sorry, no way around that if you want to write-off most of your trip. Your primary purpose must be for business therefore you must spend more days working than not. However, the workdays do not have to be eight-hour workdays and can include some pleasure. Keep reading to see how easy planning this can be.

The weekend sandwich strategy is effective in allowing you to write off the maximum amount of your vacation without exposing you to high level IRS challenges and penalties. This strategy works like this: You schedule work for at least the Friday before and the Monday after a weekend. The Friday and Monday, of course, are workdays. If you travelled on Thursday and Tuesday, you would have four workdays since your travel days to go to a business event and your travel days to get home from a business event are counted as additional workdays. It is especially important to have more business days than workdays.

You will be able to deduct all your travel, lodging and meals. Your entertainment expenses would not be deductible if they were for purely pleasure. To withstand any IRS scrutiny, you must thoroughly document your business work and expenses. Proper planning goes a long way to securing your maximum deduction.

Posted in Tax