Travel Nursing tax right offs

[Melyegomez]

Hi guys, recently got into travel nursing and I'm doing a lot of driving. My plan is to lease a vehicle now my question is can I submit my car expenses as a tax write off? What are the expenses I can write off?

[AceOfHearts<3]

This might be more of a question for a CPA.

Do do you think leasing is really what you want to do if you will be putting a lot of miles on the vehicle? It might be a cheaper monthly payment, but you typically get hit with massive fees for going over the set mileage.

[Been there,done that, ASN, RN]

Only an accountant can give you that information. I was able to write off a rental car, seems like if you own/lease the vehicle, there would be no write off.

Do use an accountant now, taxes are much different for travel nurses.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

Moved to the Travel Nursing forum for greater response rate.

[NedRN]

I'm not an accountant, but I can still come up with valid advice! So here is the deal, you can indeed write off business miles however the hassle of expensing actual costs is unlikely to be the best way for most travelers. A better method is to use the IRS allowed mileage rate, currently 54 cents a mile. This rate includes normal (average) depreciation of a newer car, gas, maintenance, and insurance.

One big difference of the two methods is you will have to document every mile if you itemize, separating business and personal miles. Using the mileage rate, your documentation will consist of two maps from Google or whoever that you save: one from your home to the assignment, and another one from your assignment housing to your assignment hospital (keep your timecards and simply multiply shifts worked by RT commute). This automatically separates all personal use of the car, for example swinging to a national park on the way to an assignment, and trips to the grocery store. I will say that some accountants will allow all miles from home until you are back as business expenses but that is an aggressive treatment and will probably bite you if audited.

Finally, when you report total mileage to your accountant (if you don't do your own taxes), you also have to report the travel expenses you receive each assignment from the agency (subtracting them from your total mileage if you do your own filing).

[SanDiFrangles, RN, NP, CNS]

This isn't an endorsement, but I've used Hicks Financial Service out of San Diego since they do focus on travel nursing tax returns. I always get great service from their CPAs - very knowledgable about travel nursing tax treatment. They used to have you input all your expenses into a document. If your interested here is their website.

[NedRN]

PanTravelers maintains a list of tax preparers that have a focus on healthcare travelers. I think there are around eight on their useful links page including Hicks. Just as with us, their home location is unimportant. But just like your relationship with your recruiter, you want good communications with your tax preparer! I will say that these listed tax preparers are better trained and more professional than the average recruiter so you are more likely to get lucky with your first call. But by all means call several to see who you click with.

All handle multistate taxation and a good number are proficient with Canadian nationals.