Originally Posted by rickair7777

There's a difference between deadhead/home-basing travel (company moving you for THEIR convenience and business purposes to varied locations) vs. positive space to/from home and your USUAL place of work.

The later is not generally tax exempt, since regular 9-5 workers cannot tax deduct their daily drive to work (or flight to work, for those few who might commute by air). Employees who get a company car as a perk get taxed on that (no tax if they need the car to do business, ie outside sales).

There's a special carve-out for airline employee space available nonrev travel, but you can get taxed for your buddy travel and if it's positive space you're just like any other poor schlep going to work.

There's plenty of confusion because of the nonrev carve-out, and if you went to court you might even be able to establish a precedent that positive space nonrev is the same as space available nonrev. Withholding is applied inconsistently, but if the IRS notices a bunch of folks getting free full-fare tickets to work they might come looking for back-taxes. I agree there's enough confusion that jail would be highly unlikely.

But just because you guys don't like it, and the rules are complex, doesn't mean it's not so...