Should I stay or should I go? (several questions)

[Kiramu]

My hubby and I are considering the feasibility of travel nursing for us. I have some questions that I'm hoping you can weigh in on to help us with this decision.

1. is 56 too old to start traveling?

2. Are most jobs in urban areas or can you get assignments in rural hospitals?

3. We plan on living in our motorhome. What is average space rent around the western half of the country?

4. Can you get enough assignments to be full time or is it hit and miss?

5. How difficult is it to establish a 'tax home' if you're traveling?

I'd love to hear from anyone, you don't have to answer all the questions, any would do.

[HikingNinja, BSN, MSN, DNP, RN, APRN, NP]

If you sell your home, you no longer have a residence to return to, and thus no tax home is possible. You cannot just return to the general area of your old home, stay in a motel, and meet IRS criteria. I think you are misunderstanding what Joe is telling you.[/

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. I have clarified this fully with Travel Tax. There are several ways in which you can keep or establish a tax home. One way is to return to your already established tax home each year, earn approximately 25% of your income there, and pay taxes on your stipend or have all wages taxed. You are not required to keep your physical residence to keep your tax home. Trust me (or I would prefer you wouldn't and call, email, or review the Travel Tax site for yourself), I had the folks at Travel Tax give me 20 different examples of how this works. Again I encourage those who are curious to take a look at the Travel Tax website FAQs. It gives several different examples of tax homes. One is actually an RV example of a person who starts out without a tax home but acquires one by taking assignments in the same city every winter, starts to pay taxes like that is his tax home, and continues to live and travel in his rv.

It really didn't make sense to me at first but after they went over my situation, then gave me other examples for a good half hour I started to get it.

[NedRN]

I understand tax homes very well, and I serve on a board with TravelTax. Yes, a tax home can be the place where the majority of your income is made, but it makes no difference in the ability to deduct expenses (or accept tax-free reimbursements) for traveling away from an area in which you have no residence. You would be itinerant effectively for deducting expenses (you can't). TravelTax has a very extensive website, see if you can come up with specific citations, not just your interpretation of unrelated anecdotes.

Here is one story I think you will find easily on TravelTax's site: If your only home is an RV, you are at home wherever you are, and thus cannot be working away from home. Renting or owning an RV pad cannot be claimed as a tax home, because there is no year round residence maintained there to return to.

There is certainly no law that would prevent you from paying state taxes to a single state on all your income because you have a recurring assignment there and make a plurality of your income there. But the IRS (federal government, not state) will not allow you to deduct expenses for working away from that state if you don't have expenses of maintaining a residence. It goes against the theory that deducted expenses (or tax-free reimbursements) are for expenses that would not have been incurred if you had stayed at home. You have no extra expenses as you are always at home in an RV - thus there is nothing to deduct.