Yes. Unfortunately we still have 5 of them sitting in YYZ. They were all stripped of there delta and comair logos though so those might already be sold.

 

Jesuschrist, is that the only deduction you people may have?. This is my third year deducting my crashpad this time around, amongst other items. I have done this before these last 3 years. The point being, you HAVE to do it if you stay in the job, and having it as a deduction it's better than nothing. My salary is just like any second/third year peon (F/O). Having to pay for a crashpad only augments my tax deductions, which btw, it is not a fixed cost called "crashpad"....it is work related expense. Those are calculated at a higher return/deduction percentage rate in your 1040A itemized forms. Anyhow, if you are single or filling standard deduction (NOT ITEMIZING), this is not for you. I'm sure those guys with a mortgage payment, kids, etc. know what I'm talking about. (So you know, this business is so good for deductions related to job expenses for the nature of it, traveling, that pretty much anything you pay for after you leave your home for the purpose of going to work, is deductible).
And btw, my accountant's main job (or any other accountant for that matter) is to know and apply IRS laws when doing a person's taxes. It is in their best interest, for auditing purposes.
All I can say is this, inform yourselves. On a normal year (when I'm flying as a job, plus my wive's salary), I have yet to get anything than a nice return back from my taxes.

 

Oh btw, my tax bracket is 10.5 % and my wife's is 12.0 %.
Learn your tax laws and apply them to your benefit.........enjoy! :-)

 

evilboy,
Any chance you were able to collect all the ship numbers and the N numbers? I saw you asked a while ago and was looking for the same myself. If you could, please PM this info; I would greatly appreciate it. And if evilboy doesn't and someone else does if you could help me out that would be great!

 

They're from the line, but are in lease return condition, which means thay have the original engines and whatever is required by the leassor.

 

The only aircraft that still belong to Comair go to VCV until sold. All the others are lease returns and no longer belong to Comair as soon as the aircraft is delivered to wherever their final destination is.

 

So have we determined if the correct amount of airframes are still in service. If not, why don't we do anything about it. You know the main reason that management doesn't follow our contract, it because we let them get away with it everytime.

 

Regardless of where you live, your “tax home” is where you are BASED. Expenses you incur are deductible only if outside your “tax home”. IRS Publication 463 has several pages dedicated to this subject. If you take this deduction and are audited by the IRS, you will lose. Unless this is a temporary assignment you can't deduct a crashpad.

Publication 463 (2008), Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses

 

The point is not just how much you can deduct. It's still capital out the window. It's like a savings account where you deposit $100, but when you check the balance available for withdrawal, there's only $15 there.

"Congratulations" on getting your effective tax rate down to 10%. I put that in quotations because many of us are so focused on paying as little tax as possible that we spend a lot of money in the process. The mortgage interest deduction, for example, is something many homeowners think is great. They adjust their gross income by subtracting out the amount of interest they paid on their mortgage during the tax year...effectively allowing them to earn the amount of money they spent on mortgage interest tax free. In the end though, someone who earned $35,000 and paid $10,000 in interest ($25,000 a.g.i.) only "saved" $1747 in federal tax liability.

That doesn't mean one shouldn't own a house. It is merely to try to illustrate that tax deductions come with a price that is generally much higher than the money saved in the end. Net worth suffers as a result of focusing exclusively on tax reduction, as it does with completely ignoring tax implications.

I am not a fan of getting money back from the government because I overpaid throughout the prior tax year, but that's another topic.

In summary, spending $5000 on work related tax deductions when one is in the 15% tax bracket to begin with will only "save" someone 15% of $5000...or $750. That's a pretty poor return on investment, from my perspective.

I am not writing this to argue with one of my respected colleagues. We have contract negotiations coming up in a couple of years, and the more impoverished our pilot group is, the more likely we are to accept anything that Atlanta suggests is "fair". It is in our collective interest for every individual here to have as strong a balance sheet as possible when entering those negotiations.

A few of us like to consider ourselves "better", "superior", etc. to Mesa pilots, but at the end of the year, a commuting Comair Pilot is going to finish with less wealth than a CVG domiciled, non-commuting Mesa pilot (if there is such a thing).

If a moderator drops in on this I'll say in advance that the financial impact on Comair crews forced to relocate in order to maintain employment is the seed from which this discussion has evolved. Pilots who in the future may consider Comair as a prospective employer (if Delta ever elects to invest in Comair's future) may benefit from this discussion.

 

sorry my friend, no luck. h46bubba was trying to help, but no luck. I'll PM you later with an idea I have.