Salto Jorge <Dr.Sa...[at]guidedadventures.org> wrote:

- quote -

You arguably had a deduction for all your unreimbursed costs
as out-of- pocket employee business expenses. From your
facts you would not have been in Italy except for your job
requirements. It would help if you spent at least 4 hours
on job related duties on each of 11 different days (where
travel days to and from Europe count as 2 of those 11 days).

More aggressively you have, in my opinion, a good case for
deducting your unreimbursed church related costs as
charitable contributions.

I realize charitable organizations and churchs ofter have
severe budget constraints, but both making you pay for a
significant fraction of the costs yourself AND having you
use vacation days on this trip seems egregious.

Moderator:
If you have not filed or filed an extension, file an
extension NOW and discuss this with a local tax pro.
I am in complete agreement with every part of the above
response.

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Can Travel Expenses be deducted when the trip was for work
that involves personal time?

I am employed by a large church as a religious coordinator.
A couples group from church was going to Italy on a retreat.
One month before they were to leave, the pastor informed me
about the retreat that I did not know about, and told me
that he would like for me to go along since this was a
large group. The priest was the director for the retreat.

I said could go, but upon seeing the price told him I could
not and after talking to my husband (who would not be going).
The priests at the church talked about and decided that they
could pay for 1/3 from a fund they had it I paid the
remainder.

This was a 21 day trip, On my time sheet some of the time
was recorded as vacation and the remainder as working in
Italy.

The stipulation in the trip was that I would serve as the
priest's assistant if situations took place since I am a
coordinator at the parish.

Can any of my expenses be taken on my tax return ?

<< ================================================== ===== > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting posts > << to this newsgroup as well as our anti-spamming policy > << are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2006) - All rights reserved. > << ================================================== ===== >