I live in California where you can still write off unreimbursed employee expenses at the state level. I paid the $50 at EzPerdiem and increased my state refund by $500. The last thing I want to do is give the government (especially California) more money so I jumped all over that deduction. I still miss the federal deduction but at least I didn't have to pay AMT this year.

I'd be 100% onboard with this, regardless of the tax issue. Even deducting a shortfall doesn't reimburse you anywhere near what the shortfall is, it only "saves" you the tax rate, which, for now, is less than 50/70/90%...

Full per diem rates and then this issue resolves itself from all angles.

Look up the government per firm rates and compare them to what we get. Do you really want to reduce our perdiem. The rates were covered in another thread. Make sure you use the correct table. Most didn’t and were surprised when they did.

I made roughly the same amount of money as I did in 2017, and my taxes went way up!

My taxes went way up for four reasons:

-I’m single
-I make good money (my marginal tax rate went up from 28% to 32%)
-I own a home (SALT deduction capped at 10k)
-I’m a pilot (lost union expenses, uniform cleaning, and per diem differential)

I’m obviously really annoyed with this GOP tax reform as it raised my taxes and a significant amount of other people (pilots were hit especially hard).

George Bush passed a tax cut that benefited 100% of Americans. Barack Obama made that tax cut permanent for 99% of Americans. Now Trump comes along and actually RAISES taxes on lots of Americans, and his reform cost more than the previous two... WTH

Could it maybe have something to do with the fact that there was 100% lock step obstruction from the party Trump isn't in and it had to be that way to skate by under highly restrictive budget reconcillation rules? If the other party wanted additional tax cuts all they'd have to do is co sponsor that in numbers sufficient to add to the other side of the isle and it would pass in 10 seconds.

Another part of this is that the tax cuts (most Americans got one from the bill) are temporary...again, to get around the restrictive rules of budget reconcillation or there wouldn't have been any cuts for the majority of Americans at all. Bernie complained about the temporary nature of the cuts, so Cruz immediately invited him to cosponsor a bill making them permanant which would require 9 opposition party votes...and the offer was refused.

In any case, if you don't like tax increases, get ready for 2020 and beyond because you are the 1%.

Indeed it is.

That darn 16th amendment!

I was comparing what the Navy Reserve pays me in San Francisco and San Diego for the M&IE rate

Per https://www.gsa.gov/travel/plan-book...20Francisco%20

San Francisco is $76 per day. That's $3.16/hr. We currently get what? $2.65? (on Navy orders, don't have company iPad to check contract)

San Diego is $71 per day MI&E
$2.95 / hr

Seattle $76 just like SFO

Paris is $175 a day.
That's $7.29/hr.
That was one of the higher ones, I can see an upper cap, but a lower limit such as hot less than $3/$3.50 Domestic /Intl would protect us to not go lower than what we have.


Sent from my 2PYB2 using Tapatalk

You picked two of the more expensive cities in the US. If you averaged all our layover cities we are on par or above the government rate. Keep in mind on international several of your meals are provided by the company in addition to per diem. Getting the flight attendants to not cook them 4 hours before serving them is however a entire other issue. Most typically purchase 1 dinner and breakfast on a 3 day trip.

1. Get married. Or a civil union.
2. Work less.
3. Sell your home and rent.
4. If those don't work, find a new line of work.


Other than that, I'm sorry your taxes are going up. Mine went up too, but I'm not gonna complain about that here.