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NedRN · Jul 29, 2021

You can make a living as an itinerate worker, but yes the finances do work out better if you have a tax home most of the time (depending on your expenses at home of course - compare total bankable income both ways). If you do have a home (whether owned or rented or an apartment) suitable for a roommate, then you can get one to help cover home expenses. Most anyone would love to get half price on a full residence where you may only be home a few days a year. The requirement however to maintain such a situation as a tax home is that a room (bedroom) is reserved for your exclusive use whenever you return. In other words, you cannot rent (or sublet) the entire place out.

Agencies are unused to travelers without a tax home, nor do they want them really. Mostly travelers lie about their circumstances on the housing form every agency makes you fill out - with the full encouragement of recruiters to "just use your parent's address" even if you don't live there or contribute to that residence's expenses.

The reason they don't really want itinerant travelers is that travel compensation is split between taxable income and stipends. An employer must pay their share of payroll taxes on taxable income which is over 6%. Thus your quoted compensation will not be competitive with most other quotes you get (key business point), and higher overtime rates will also cut into their normal and expected profit margin.

Can they make all your compensation taxable? Yes, and that would probably be best for you as you now have zero issues with taxation, and the employer contribution to FICA will boost your potential for retirement and disability, as well as unemployment (hopefully at least one of those three conditions you will have need for in the future). But it a bitter pill for you to take when they offer you a housing stipend of say $1,500 a month and when they reduce it by one third after withholding your income taxes and FICA share. Which may not get you decent housing in many places. Right?

But if they really will not agree to an all compensation is taxable situation, you can simply lie on your housing form and declare all those taxable stipends as taxable income at the end of the year and pay taxes owed with your return. That makes you legal and zero issues should you ever be audited (but doing this way will increase your audit risk). This will work for year one, after that the IRS is going to want quarterly estimated taxes paid (messy - you will probably want a tax person to file that for you).

All that make sense? It can be hard to wrap your head around all this having never traveled for business before and I've given you the bare bones answer I think.

saskrn · Jul 31, 2021

Thank you for your reply! I'm sorry if this is late, I didn't realize that there were any responses.

We traveled for years in the past, but always had a tax home. Your info helps a lot! We spoke with one recruiter who was great, and straight-forward about pay without a home base. And we talked to a recruiter who literally said that we "have to have a tax home" for him to give us any pay rates at all.He also said he was going to follow up via email, and he didn't do that either. We're still irked. Unfortunately, the location we want is a bit obscure, and that guy is the one who has the location we want. ?

Thank you again! I think we'll likely look for a tax base.

NedRN · Jul 31, 2021

9 hours ago, saskrn said:

I think we'll likely look for a tax base.

Great!

I didn't think of it at the time I wrote the post, but if the pay is amazing because of current conditions, then traveling itinerant will feel OK. Yes, you would still benefit from tax advantages if you maintain a lower cost residence, but it may seem trivial because of your amazing compensation.

So a couple of thoughts about starting with your bucket list, I would advise against it generally for new travelers (that is for the other 200 readers of this thread), especially if there are no open needs. Come back to it later.

Not a facebook user, but there are a number of open recruiting pages where you can post where you want to go.

Even better is to call the facility and ask what agencies they use. You can use this to your benefit and go with the best paying agency (shop them all), or the best quality agency. You want either HR or staffing in the hospital.

You can even do a deeper work around by calling the manager of the unit you want to work on (best if you know they have a current need) and state you are really interested in working at their hospital (and what agencies they use - manager may not know but always a good question). That usually turns into an informal interview and the manager wants you! Have your CV (actually a plain work history and a couple of written references work best - CVs are for staff jobs) ready to email immediately if the manager is interested.

If this is successful, you have negotiating power over every agency to hand them a fait accompli, just needing a compensation quote from them.

Note: If you call staffing and they say they use a vendor manager, ask for the name (also phone number they use) and call that VM to ask for agency names. Generally there will only be a half dozen agencies (almost never just one) that have completed the necessary contracts and are eligible to staff the hospital. You may have to be persistent, try asking for the account manager for that facility.