Any medical expense (including chiropractor or mental therapy) can be deducted as long as those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income. So in short, yes, those snowflakes will be able to make the deduction if the above criteria is met.

I'd have to double check, but I thought you could deduct the percentage of the cost for items required for work (cell phone, internet,...) that you use for work. It has been a long time since I was in that situation (not with an airline yet) so I'd have to dig back into it to be sure.

Same three here. You'd be hard pressed to prove how much you use them for work. And since you don't have a business, they probably wouldn't qualify anyway. A crash pad isn't legit because you are not required to have one by the company. That's a personal preference.

You can but the amount isnt worth the hassle of maintaining a record (for me less than 5% of total use).

I don't deduct crashpad because of IRS 511.
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc511.html

Another one that raised a flag for me was the travelnet fee. Commuter fees are generally not deductable unless traveling between job locations. Travel from home to work is almost always a no-go.

According to that if you change bases every year you can deduct all travel expenses.

You could make that argument.

How did you come to that conclusion?

From IRS 511

"You can deduct travel expenses paid or incurred in connection with a temporary work assignment away from home. However, you can't deduct travel expenses paid in connection with an indefinite work assignment. Any work assignment in excess of one year is considered indefinite."

No, because if you change bases, your tax home changes as well.

Also, for tax purposes, at least in my previous 135 world, our company HQ was considered the tax home. If you were based somewhere else, then you could claim travel/mileage from HQ to the other base. But not from home to HQ. So if MSP is considered our tax base, it wouldn't change as you moved from base to base.

Not sure which way it works with 121 ops, but either way, it would seem to me that changing bases would not qualify. Might be a question to ask several CPAs (since they are often wrong).

I have no idea what you're getting at. For those of us in 121 this is simple.

You're tax base is where you live. Not ny or mi or mn.

If you spend more than 50% of your time making money for company in ny you would owe ny state income tax. Unless you're reserve last out for a year and crash in ny state (vs jersey or something) and never got called it'd be near impossible to qualify for that. I suppose if you are a senior fo and got every trip bought off and sat at home the whole year flying up once every 3rd month for 3 to and landing you might owe. If you did your fed holdings would be even less.

The account is gonna try and charge you 350 every time to research obscure ny tax regs to tell you that you dont owe. Do a "log" of some sort where you are month to month if ever audited.

Anyway. Enjoy tax season.