Our guide to common business travel expenses
Quick insights
- Common business travel expenses include transportation, lodging and meals.
- Keeping detailed records—such as receipts, trip purpose and business contacts—can help when reconciling business expenses.
- Separating personal from business spending could streamline expense tracking and potentially improve reimbursement and deduction accuracy.
Business travel can open doors to growth, stronger relationships and fresh opportunities. One of the main challenges for frequent business travelers isn’t just catching flights—it’s expense management.
Knowing what qualifies as a business expense and accurately tracking charges may take time and effort. Here’s our practical guide for understanding business travel expenses, avoiding common pitfalls and making the most of your spending and deductions on the road.
What qualifies as a business travel expense?
Business travel expenses are the ordinary and necessary costsOpens overlay you incur when traveling away from your regular workplace for business. According to the IRS, business travel expensesOpens overlay apply if you’re away from your main place of work long enough to require sleep or rest to meet your business duties. For example, if you fly out of town for an overnight client meeting, many associated costs may count as business travel expenses.
Cleary separating your work and personal expense can help you later during tax time. This can be especially helpful if you take a trip that mixes businesses and personal expenses. For example, if you add a vacation to a work trip, only the business portion is deductible. In these cases, detailed records—receipts, itineraries and notes—are important in case you face IRS questions.
Common business travel expenses
Knowing what to track can make both expense reporting and tax time much easier. Here are some common business travel categories:
Transportation
This category encompasses costs associated with getting to and from your business destination, as well as getting around once you're there. This can include:
- Airfare: This includes the cost of your flight tickets, seat selection fees and potentially any flight upgrades.
- Train tickets and public transit: Fares for inter-city trains, local subways, buses and trams used for business purposes are common transportation expenses.
- Taxis and rideshares: Costs in this category include rideshare services or traditional taxis for getting to and from airports, hotels, meetings or getting to and from other business-related locations.
- Rental cars: The rental fee, along with associated costs such as fuel and insurance are common transportation expenses.
- Use of a personal vehicle (Mileage): If you use your own car for business travel, you can typically deduct mileage at the standard mileage rate, which covers fuel, maintenance and depreciation.
- Parking and tolls: This expense category includes fees incurred for parking your vehicle (rental or personal) and tolls paid on highways or bridges during your business trip.
Lodging
Your accommodation costs while away from your primary residence for business are a common expense. Lodging is a broad category that can include hotel rooms, apartments or other short-term stay accommodations.
Additional fees associated will lodging could include:
- Local, state and occupancy taxes
- Incidental charges like early check-in/late check-out fees
- Charges for using hotel amenities that are directly business-related
Meals
Food is a common expense when traveling. Business travel expenses related to food can include restaurant meals, room service, food purchased from grocery stores for consumption in your lodging.
Some companies opt for a per diem system, where employees receive a fixed daily allowance for meals and incidental expenses. This can simplify tracking but may require adherence to specific rules.
For food expenses, you may want to keep receipts detailing the date, amount, location and business purpose of the meal, including who was present if it was a business meeting.
Other common travel business expenses
This is not an exhaustive list, but other common travel business expenses include:
- Tips and gratuities: Small payments made to service providers for good service. This includes tips for porters handling luggage, housekeeping staff, hotel valets, airport shuttle drivers and restaurant servers.
- Communication: Costs incurred to stay connected and conduct business while on the road. This could include Wi-Fi charges, roaming fees and mobile data plans.
- Supplies and materials: Items purchased specifically for your work while traveling could include printing services, office supplies, shipping costs or trade show materials.
- Baggage fees: Charges related to transporting your luggage like fees for checked or overweight bags charged by your airline.
- Laundry and dry cleaning: It may be necessary to maintain a professional appearance on extended trips which can include paying for laundering services while traveling.
- Conference or event fees: Costs associated with attending professional gatherings which often include a registration fee.
How to manage and track your business travel expenses
Effective expense management may save employees and their employers some headache when it comes to submitting and managing business travel expenses.
It can help to set up a system for tracking costs while traveling or familiarizing yourself with the company policy regarding tracking and submitting expenses. If you manage a company or team, clear travel and expense policies may help everyone understand which expenses are reimbursable and what documentation is needed.
Separating business from personal spending can help to more easily organize and spot business expenses among your transactions. Using a business credit card or separate bank account for work travel not only saves time later but also prevents accidental mixing of personal costs with business expenses.
In summary
Managing business travel expenses effectively involves understanding what qualifies as an "ordinary and necessary" cost incurred while away from your primary workplace for business purposes. Common expense categories include transportation, such as airfare, train tickets, rideshares and rental cars as well as lodging and meals. Other common expenses can encompass tips, communication costs, supplies, baggage fees, laundry and conference fees.
To streamline expense tracking, it can help to maintain detailed records, separate business and personal spending and consider using dedicated business accounts or cards. While many business travel expenses are tax-deductible, personal extensions or non-business-related costs are generally not.
JPMorgan Chase and its affiliates do not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only. You should consult your own tax, legal and accounting professionals for information specific to your financial situation.
