Blackwing

Anybody have or seen a chart or spreadsheet with federal M&IE rates listed by airport code?

jagbn

I assume you're working on your taxes. If you're a pilot, you are a "transportation worker" and can use the flat rate daily M&IE rate rather than looking up each individual overnight. Makes things a lot easier. I have always used the flat rate. Not only much quicker to do, it gets you as good as if not a better deduction than the city by city method. Note that this is for domestic flying. If you do a lot of international flying, I would recommend going city by city. It's tedious to look up, but worth it. The flat rate is $68; many international cities are twice that or more. The Jan 2017 rate for London, for example, is $142.

Google IRS Pub. 463 for starters, look at page 6. Don't forget that you have to offset any M&IE deduction with reimbursements received from your employer, if any. There is a lot of information available directly from the IRS on travel expenses and special rules for transportation workers.

If I recall correctly from doing my taxes last year, you can tell Turbotax that you're a transportation worker (there's a checkbox somewhere), and it guides you thru the process.

Remember, I'm just some guy on the internet. Do your own research, and consult a tax professional or attorney.

The GSA website for looking up domestic per diem rates is here. https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/100120. There's a link on that GSA page that takes you to the State Dept. page for foreign rates.

Kind regards,
JAGBN

Twin Wasp

Or there are services around that will do the math. You get them into your airline schedule one time and they crunch the numbers. And the $60-$80 dollar fee is a tax deduction next year.

zoomie78

Please try my service for free. It provides an instant report. You can upload your schedule automatically if you work for certain airlines, otherwise you can manually input your layovers. If the automatic option is not available, but you have a text, CSV, or Excel file available, I can update my program.
I am a retired Captain and do this service as a hobby. I have about 2000 users.
www.onlineperdiem.com

zoomie78

The ability to check the rate for a specific airport sounded like a good idea, so I wrote a program for you to do that. Give this page a try, (free) no gimmicks:
Input-Page
Not a pretty page but it does work. All you need is the airport IATA code and a date you want to check for.

rickair7777

Technically, you need to reference the federal rates by zip code of the hotel, not the airport. Could be different.

You can either take the CONUS-standard flat-rate for all overnights, or break it down by zip code specific rate. One of those two methods will probably give you a better return but you'd have to calculate both to find out which. You cannot mix and match the two, use either one or the other.

If you mostly overnight in low-cost middle-American outstations, then just take the flat rate.

If you mostly overnight in hubs, you'll almost certainly get a better return with zip codes since hubs tend to be higher COL. Same for overseas hubs, even more so.

zoomie78

Rickair7777 you are right and I agree with the info you provided. However, the rates are based on city and sometimes county. My database gets the city and county of the airport and applies it to the Government table. There are several different types of tables to reference. I reference Department of State, Department of Defence, and GSA tables depending on country of the airport.

rickair7777

Yes, I was trying to say you need to use the rate for the location of the hotel, which might be different than the airport. Minor point, but they might catch it on an audit.

zoomie78

For airline crews, it would be near impossible to get completely accurate data. I think you can only be as accurate as possible. In the US you can use the county of the hotel to be accurate, but most hotel addresses do not include the county. For example a layover in the New York area. The hotel might be in a city that is not in the government charts if not staying downtown, but the county is in the charts. Thus you would lose the higher government rate for the New York area and only get the lower state rate.
Where you need to be careful would be Tokyo. Not many crews stay downtown Tokyo, so you need to adjust for the outlying areas around the city when using the Tokyo airports to get an acceptable rate. The difference is significant, and could draw the attention of the IRS.
It is not too complicated, and I encourage any crewmember to take the deduction. Even a new hire domestic Flight Attendant could put about $500 in their pocket. The highest paid international Captain, will not benefit as much as their deductions start to disappear.
Average allowed government Per Diem totals range from about:
$7,000-$9,000 domestic flying
$12,000-$15,000 domestic and Caribbean/Central America
$15,000-$18000 European Asia flying
Number gets reduced by your company's Per Diem reimbursement and then by 20%. Total deductions must exceed 2.5% of adjusted total income.
TAKE THE DEDUCTION