Travel Expenses for a Visiting Professor.

Abstract The topic of deductibility of a visiting professor's travel expenses away from home has elicited much discussion in recent years, as of April 1975. A researcher suggests that the costs of travel while temporarily away from home are deductible if the professor has an obligation to return to his original institution or if he continues to maintain a home or an apartment. Another researcher expands upon this topic and places emphasis on the duplication of expenses. More recently, the American Accounting Association's Committee on Tax Information Service seems to accept that the visiting professor, on leave from and obligated to return to the first university, should find the deduction easy to substantiate as long as the visiting position is temporary. The purpose of this article is to provide support for the notion that a visiting professor, regardless of the existence of any obligation to return to the first university, may deduct travel expenses away from home if the visit is temporary. It is well known that trade expenses away from home are deductible for tax purposes. The travel expenses must be reasonable in amount, incurred while away from home and in pursuit of a trade or business.