I was informed that one of my drivers heard the rumor mill that the average per diem was $58. The new tables even only go from $39 to $64 per day. Unless you only travel from someplace like Sedona, AZ going to Washington DC and back you are going to over estimate and could get into a lot of trouble. After tracking 3 drivers for their every destination the average for 60 days was $46 calculated per diem as the Federal Government does by PRIMARY DESTINATION. They went to more $44 dollar and $39 dollar locations than the $59 or $64. Doing it the micro management way of every where you ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner the average was $41.60 per day this is the method some other members are using. Of course I've only tracked the last 60 days to get a sampling of the difference in methods. Just a little info.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf page 6 has the information regarding the "special standard meal allowance if you work in the transportation industry" for 2007. If your travel was in the continental USA the rate was $52/day, outside the continental USA it was $58/day. If you use this rate system for any trip during the year, you must use it for all. Some people use the $58 because they don't notice it is OUTside the continental USA. Now if you go to Canada or Mexico then you would use the $58 if you stopped for sleep or rest there.

I don't know if it works out better than keeping track of each city. My husband won't keep track of each city he stopped for sleep or rest, and I'm not going through his log book. So we use the special standard rate.

If you use the per city rate, it is also for the city that you stopped for sleep or rest, not the rate for each city you ate in. If you were in a higher rate city during your day and ate there, but your sleep/rest time was in a cheaper rate city, you still have to use the rate for where you slept/rested.

The per diem rate go from $39 - $64 a day. Go to pub 1542 on the irs site or to GSA - Domestic Per Diem Rates. Just above the per diem breakout check the wording look for PRIMARY DESTINATION. There it will list the state/city if the city is not listed it is considered at $39 a day per diem. Per diem is driven by the PRIMARY Destination. If you are going to Washington, Dc and it takes you 4 days the per diem for those days is $64 a day. If you are going to Cut & Shoot, TX and it takes you 4 days the per diem for those days is $39 a day. You don't have to track where you slept, ate breakfast lunch or dinner.

When he gets an assignment it will estimate the days to get there look up the per diem rate for the PRIMARY destination, not the little cities in between just put it down on a list: 01/01/2007 Washington,DC 4 days $64.00 $256
01/05/2007 Cut & Shoot, TX 4 days $39.00 $156
At the end of the year or month just total up the days and add up the per diem.
Can't get much simpler than that.

The publication you referenced the section you quoted eliminates the guess work. But in the recordkeeping seciton it also says keep good records. If you continually run to locations in the lower per diem bracket and you are audited it is questionably that the figure they are quoting would hold up. If on the other hand you have a list of destinations and days and per diem - who can question that.

My husband works for PRIME while he was in training they paid him a per diem allowance and I started tracking his actual per diem. They reimbursed but even after the reimbursement the actual is almost $2,000 difference in his favor that he can deduct. Now he has his own truck and I am tracking him and 3 others using the PRIMARY destination and when I do their taxes I will have complete confidence in the figures that I put down for their per diem. It is 80% for the upcoming tax time.
But if you take the $52 a day across the board and the highest per diem is only $64 it could be looked at as 1] he did all high dollar per diem runs or 2] it needs a look to check out validation. It is always better to have it in black and white. So if Uncle Sam comes looking just pull out the paper and say look.

If you can't download the per diem table send me a valid e-mail address and I will send you a copy for the new one and the old if you need it. No-charge - The new one takes effect Oct 1, 2008.

Don'tworry, we keep his log books as part of our tax records, so we have his nights out written down.

Would you like a paper copy of the per diem table. In about 2 weeks before the new tables will be available in .llf format attached to Quickbooks Pro 2008 from Intuit. I'm having the table input so all I have to do is type in the City and it knows how much per diem and will automatically calculate it by the number of days travelled. I don't do anything by hand unless I have too. I'm having it done that way so I do a mock tax return before every quarterly so my clients aren't paying way over what they should. As I made an agreement with Jeff to provide support for his truckingboard members at no cost. I'm not looking to charge for the table, or paper copy.

Linda

The per diem rate for the coming filing year is $58 a day (2008 Tax Return).