The city-by-city per diem rates (i.e.
locality per diem rates) are established for every location in the world by the
GSA and
Department of
State. The per diem rates are used for a variety of reasons.
Per diem rates get
used by the government for meals, incidentals, and lodging reimbursements, but
for airline flight crews, per diem rates are important because they can be used
as a simple way to determine a flight
crewmember's standard meal allowance. The
standard meal
allowance is used for tax purposes as way of deducting
meals and
incidental
expenses (M&IE) from
an airline pilot or flight attendant's
taxes.
The city-by-city per diem rates
almost always generate the highest tax
deduction for meals than other
approved meal deduction methods. Most
tax preparers do not
perform the city-by-city per diem
deduction, however, because it involves looking up each rate for each city a
flight crewmember stays at in a given tax year on a given date.
EZPERDIEM.COM makes the city-by-city per diem
deduction about a 20 minute process because all of the
IATA codes for 12,500 plus
airports all over the world are pre-linked to their respective city-by-city
CONUS and
OCONUS
per diem rates.
Pilots and flight attendants simply enter their
layover airport codes into the
per diem calculator and the
worksheets and instructions for the
2106 tax form are
generated in seconds.
The city-by-city per diem deduction
is not the only method that can be used by traveling professionals to calculate
their per diem
deduction. Crewmembers can also use the
actual cost
meal deduction or the
special rate
for transportation workers, though they are generally lower that the
city-by-city. EZPERDIEM.COM uses both the special rate for transportation
workers and the city-by-city per diem
calculation to ensure that airline crewmembers get the highest per diem
deduction they are entitled to.
