J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2013: For Preparing Your 2012 Tax Return

20.8 Fixing a Tax Home If You Work in Different Locations

If you regularly work in two or more separate areas, your tax home is the area of your principal place of business or employment. You are away from home when you are away from the area of your principal place of business or employment. Therefore, you may deduct your transportation costs to and from your minor place of business and your living costs there.

Professional sports players, coaches, and managers.

When the only business of such persons is the professional sport, their home is the “club town.” But if they are in another business in addition to their professional playing, how much time is spent and how much is earned at each place determines whether their club’s hometown or the place of their off-season business is their tax home. If it is the club’s hometown, they deduct travel and living expenses while away from that town—including the time they are where the second business is. (If the second place is where their families also live, they may not deduct the families’ expenses there.) If the town where the other business is located is the tax home, then expenses in the club’s hometown may be deducted.

Airline pilots.

It is important for airline pilots who fly in and out of various locations to determine a tax home for income and deduction purposes. Generally, the IRS considers an airline pilot’s tax home to be the airport at which the pilot is regularly based. For example, in one case the IRS barred a pilot from ...