Business Travel Deductions for Freelancers: A Plain-English Guide (US)

If you're self-employed in the US, travel for your business can be deductible — but the rules are more specific than "I answered emails from the beach." This guide explains the main concepts in plain English, based on the IRS rules for business travel. It's written for freelancers and sole proprietors who report income on Schedule C.

This article is general information, not tax advice. Rules change, and your situation may differ. For the current year's details, see IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, and consider talking to a tax professional before claiming significant travel expenses.

The starting point: your "tax home"

Travel expenses are deductible only when you're traveling away from your tax home — generally the city or area where your main place of business is, regardless of where your family lives — for longer than an ordinary day's work, and you need to sleep or rest to meet the demands of your work while away.

Two consequences surprise people:

Day trips don't count as travel. You may still be able to deduct transportation for a business day trip, but meals on a trip where you don't stay overnight generally aren't travel expenses.
Full-time nomads may have no tax home at all. If you move constantly and have no regular place of business or main home, the IRS can consider you an itinerant — and someone who's never "away from home" can't deduct travel expenses. If you live as a digital nomad, it's worth understanding this before you plan around deductions.

What can be deductible

When you're traveling away from home for business, ordinary and necessary expenses can include:

Transportation to and from your destination — flights, trains, buses
Local transportation at the destination — taxis, rideshares, transit, and car rental used for business
Lodging for nights you're away on business
Meals — generally 50% of the cost (more on this below)
Business costs while away — such as internet access, business calls, shipping work materials, or a coworking day pass
Incidentals like baggage fees and tips related to the above

Expenses must be ordinary and necessary for your business. A reasonable hotel qualifies; luxury upgrades beyond what the business purpose needs may be challenged.

Meals: the 50% rule

Business meals while traveling are generally only 50% deductible. A temporary rule that allowed 100% deductions for restaurant meals applied only to 2021 and 2022, so don't rely on older articles that mention it.

Self-employed people can either keep records of actual meal costs or use the standard meal allowance (the federal per diem rate for meals and incidental expenses at your destination), still subject to the 50% limit. The per diem option covers meals and incidentals only — lodging must be deducted at actual cost.

Mixed trips: business plus vacation

This is where most questions come from. The rules differ for domestic and international trips.

Travel within the US

The key question is whether the trip was primarily for business, judged by the facts — the most important being how much time you spent on business versus personal activities.

Primarily business: the cost of getting to and from the destination is deductible. Your expenses on the business days are deductible; your lodging and meals on the purely personal days are not.
Primarily personal: the cost of getting there is not deductible, even if you do some business while there. Expenses directly related to the business portion (for example, a conference fee) can still be deductible.

Example: you fly to Denver for a three-day client project, then stay two extra days to go hiking. The trip is primarily business, so the flight is deductible, as are lodging and 50% of meals for the three business days. Lodging and meals for the two hiking days are personal.

Travel outside the US

For international trips, even a primarily-business trip may require you to allocate your transportation cost between business and personal days. You generally don't need to allocate — and can treat the trip as entirely business — if either of these is true:

the trip lasted a week or less (seven consecutive days or fewer, not counting the day you leave but counting the day you return), or
you spent less than 25% of the total days on personal activities.

Otherwise, the deductible share of the transportation is the number of business days divided by the total days of the trip.

What counts as a business day

Generally:

Days you travel to and from the destination by a reasonably direct route count as business days.
Days your presence is required for business count, even if the business itself takes only part of the day.
Days you spend on business for most of your working hours count.
Weekends and holidays that fall between business days usually count as business days if it wasn't practical to go home.

Example: a 12-day trip to Lisbon — 1 travel day out, 7 days of client work (including a weekend between business days), 3 vacation days, 1 travel day back. Business days: 1 + 7 + 1 = 9 of 12, so personal days are 3 of 12 = 25%. That isn't less than 25%, and the trip is longer than a week, so you'd allocate: 9/12 = 75% of the airfare is deductible, plus your business-day lodging and meals.

Bringing a partner or friends

The cost of a spouse, partner or friend coming along is generally not deductible unless they're your employee, they have a genuine business purpose for the trip, and their expenses would otherwise be deductible.

That doesn't make your own costs non-deductible. If you share a hotel room, you can usually deduct what a single room would have cost you, not half of what you split.

Group trips: deduct your share, not what you paid

Here's a detail that matters when you travel with others and split costs. Suppose you put a $1,200 apartment on your card for a work trip shared with two other freelancers, and each of them pays you back $400.

Your expense is $400, not $1,200. The $800 you were reimbursed was never your cost. Deducting the full card charge is a common mistake when one person books for a group.

Keeping a clear record of who paid for what, how each expense was split, and what was repaid makes this easy to get right. A Splittly board does exactly that: each expense records the payer, the total and each person's share, and the Settlement page shows who reimbursed whom. You can export the whole thing to Excel and keep it with your tax records.

Records you need

The IRS expects you to be able to prove the amount, time, place and business purpose of each travel expense. In practice:

Keep receipts for all lodging, regardless of amount, and for any other expense of $75 or more.
Record the business purpose — who you met, what work you did, which conference you attended. A calendar entry or a short note written at the time is far better than a reconstruction months later.
Keep a day-by-day log of business versus personal days for mixed trips. This is the evidence for your allocation.
Keep records for at least three years after you file, which is the general period during which the IRS can review a return.

Snapping a photo of each receipt on the day you get it is the simplest habit. Splittly's Receipt Scanner can read the merchant, total and line items from a receipt photo and suggest a broad category to help you organize — but treat those suggestions as a starting point and confirm how each expense should be reported with your own records or your accountant.

Common mistakes

Deducting a trip that was mainly a vacation because you worked a few hours
Deducting 100% of meals
Deducting a travel companion's costs
Deducting the full cost of a group booking instead of your share
Claiming travel when you have no tax home
Having no record of the business purpose

Outside the US

Other countries have their own rules. In the UK, for example, expenses generally need to be incurred "wholly and exclusively" for the business, and HMRC publishes its own guidance on travel and subsistence. If you're not US-based, check your local tax authority's guidance rather than applying the US rules above.

Again: this is general information to help you understand the concepts, not tax advice. When in doubt — especially for international or mixed-purpose trips — check IRS Publication 463 for the current year or ask a qualified tax professional.