• Meal Allowance Rates For Truck Drivers
• Truck Driver Food Allowance 2018

What is Per Diem for Truck Drivers?Being a truck driver, especially for new over-the-road drivers, can be like learning a whole new way of life. The most notable change when becoming a truck driver is that you are constantly away from home and have to purchase all your meals on the road. To help, some companies offer their drivers per diem to get them started.This can get a little complicated, so we want to walk you through what per diem is and how it may or may not benefit you. If you just want to find out more about the highest-paying companies, go ahead and.Now back to per diem First, if you receive a per diem, this payment is part of your salary.

Meal Allowance Rates For Truck Drivers

Per diem is not just charity money that your trucking company decided to generously put into your pocket.Receiving per diem is more like getting a tax-free cash advance on your weekly paycheck. Your company gives you an portion of your salary upfront and tax-free. By receiving this non-taxed amount, the salary you report to the IRS will be substantially lower during tax season.Sure, you may be earning $40,000 a year. But if a portion of that amount is designated as per diem by the company on your behalf, you are only be able to record $25,000 as your annual salary.

This significant reduction in recorded salary is an important factor to consider when deciding if you wish to receive per diem. The RateWhat is per diem? Literally, it means “per day.” Per diem for truck drivers lets you take a daily allowance for food and incidentals (which is a fancy way of saying tips). Drivers can take $63 per day for most regions and $68 per day for travel outside of the United States. Truckers only pay taxes on 20% of their per diem.One reason you might choose to take per diem is because the IRS allows a driver to deduct 80% percent of their expenses on the road. If the company gives you the maximum per diem of $63, then you would only have to pay taxes on 20% percent of that number.Sounds good, right?

The only catch is that this reduces your total salary reported to the IRS during tax season, which can come back to affect you later.Per diem can be paid in one of two ways:(1) Your company can reimburse you for your road expenses, by giving you a daily allowance out of your wages (a tax-free advance); or (2) you can take a tax deduction at the end of the year.If you wait until tax season to report all the per diem you took, then the IRS will record exactly how much money you earned throughout the year. The IRS then gives you the total amount of your earned per diem back as a tax refund.If you don’t want to take the per diem, you can take a similar standard daily meal allowance, based on the per diem rate of $63 per day.

Truck Driver Food Allowance 2018

The driver would do this on their own at the end of the year as a tax deduction. The per diem higher or lower reported income is also reported to Social Security, so could affect you there as well in the future.My husband has had success taking “partial” days. We keep a yearly Excel spread sheet, showing the date / time he leaves the terminal, and the date / time he returns on each trip. We then figure the per diem on the percentages of the days he is out. The IRS has always accepted this.Also would like to note that the per diem paid by the trucking company might be considerably LESS than the IRS allowance you can take on your year end taxes.

Free download mp3 songs hindi latest. My husband’s company only used to pay $.08 / mile. Considering the 11 duty hours / averaging approx. 55 miles an hour, that would only be about $44 per day. Then, they cut it out completely, as they didn’t want the reporting hassles.