What is the Per Diem Calculator and How Can It Help Me?

The EZPERDIEM.COM Per Diem Calculator helps pilots and flight attendants quickly calculate one of the most tedious, yet lucrative components of a flight crewmember's tax return.

Before EZPERDIEM.COM, an airline pilot or a flight attendant only had a few not-so-attractive options with regard to addressing the meals and incidental expenses (M&IE) in their tax returns:

• Have an airline specialized tax preparer do their taxes
• Have a non airline specialized tax preparer complete their taxes
• Do it themselves and attempt to decipher and calculate meal expenses by hand
• Ignore the meal expenses entirely

None of these options are very appealing for their own specific reasons. Having an airline specialized tax preparer complete a tax return seems like a viable idea to many because they should know the tax laws with regard to aviation. The reality is that that is not always true. Looking into the methods of several aviation specific tax preparers will show a person that they are not all on the same page with regard to aviation tax preparation. Some are quite liberal with how they approach the tax laws, some are overly conservative, and one actually had a court-ordered warning to potential customers by the IRS posted on the front page of their entire website for allegedly misinterpreting the tax code with regard to how and when the meal expense deduction should be applied. The other downside with many aviation specific tax preparers is that they tend to be more expensive than the rate a pilot or flight attendant can get locally. Lastly, aviation specific tax preparers may not be versed on the other tax issues a pilot or flight attendant might have outside of aviation. These issues might include rental property depreciation, stock trading, local tax issues and more. There are some very good aviation specific tax preparers, and they have their place, but they are not for every pilot or flight attendant.

A lot of pilots and flight attendants use their own non aviation tax preparers. The plus side is that they tend to be local to the area that the pilot or flight attendant lives. The negative side of counting on a non aviation specialized tax preparer is that they almost never take the time to properly calculate an pilot's or a flight attendant's M&IE tax deduction (a.k.a. per diem deduction). They often use a rudimentary method of quickly calculating this important flight crew specific tax component, often costing the unknowing pilot or flight attendant hundreds of dollars. Often the crewmembers falsely assume that their tax preparer is calculating the per diem deduction properly, but the truth is they almost never do because it is very time consuming.

Calculating the meal expenses by hand is not a practical solution either. It takes hours to do it and often a very small mathematical error can corrupt the entire per diem calculation. The frustration of looking up ever single CONUS or OCONUS city for each time you stay there is daunting to say the least. The math isn't especially difficult. It is just long and tedious, and this leads to mistakes.

The last idea of ignoring the M&IE expenses isn't viable either. The so called per diem deduction can lead to hundreds (sometime thousands) of extra dollars in tax refund money. Skipping it is equal to handing that money over to the IRS even though they didn't ask for it.

EZPERDIEM.COM was developed to solve these problems, and for many flight crewmembers, it has! With EZPERDIEM.COM's Per Diem Calculator, the per diem deduction is approximately a 15 minute task that simultaneously checks the two approved IRS methods for calculating this tax deduction, and it is as simple as entering in your overnights into a quick form.

Getting the per diem deduction included in flight crewmember's taxes is now an easy and affordable task. EZPERDIEM.COM offers other services as well and these are all offered at prices lower than any other aviation tax service available today. Whether you use your own tax preparer or tax software such as TurboTax or TaxCut, EZPERDIEM.COM can help you with your airline taxes online, fast!