Travel vs local therapy jobs: tax home, assignment length, and licensure
Travel OT, PT, and SLP jobs usually mean short assignments away from where you live, often with travel or housing payments. Whether those payments are tax-free depends on IRS rules about your “tax home” and how long an assignment is expected to last. This page quotes IRS Publication 463 and links this site’s licensure pages. It is not tax advice.
Quoted from official pages checked November 12, 2026. Confirm current requirements and dates on those sites. This page is not legal, tax, or compliance advice.
Source read on November 12, 2026: IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, chapter 1.
What a tax home is
“Generally, your tax home is your regular place of business or post of duty, regardless of where you maintain your family home. It includes the entire city or general area in which your business or work is located.”
If you have no regular or main place of work, “your tax home may be the home where you regularly live.” The IRS uses three factors: you do part of your work near your main home and lodge there while working in the area; you have living expenses at that home that you duplicate because work takes you away; and you have not abandoned the area, have family living there, or often use the home for lodging (paraphrased). “If you satisfy all three factors, your tax home is the home where you regularly live.”
The itinerant trap
“If you satisfy only one factor, you are an itinerant; your tax home is wherever you work and you can’t deduct travel expenses.” And: “As an itinerant, you can’t claim a travel expense deduction because you are never considered to be traveling away from home.”
Temporary vs indefinite assignments
“Generally, a temporary assignment in a single location is one that is realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less.” But “An assignment or job in a single location is considered indefinite if it is realistically expected to last for more than 1 year, whether or not it actually lasts for more than 1 year.”
“If your assignment is indefinite, you must include in your income any amounts you receive from your employer for living expenses, even if they are called ‘travel allowances’ and you account to your employer for them.” Also: “A series of assignments to the same location, all for short periods but that together cover a long period, may be considered an indefinite assignment.” Extensions count too: when an assignment expected to be short is extended past the one-year expectation, the IRS treats it as indefinite from the change (paraphrased from its examples).
Employer reimbursement plans
Under an accountable plan, expenses must have a business connection, you must adequately account for them to your employer within a reasonable period, and you must return any excess within a reasonable period (paraphrased). For employees, unreimbursed travel expenses are generally not deductible: the publication describes them as a miscellaneous deduction “that is no longer allowable due to the suspension of miscellaneous itemized deductions subject to the 2% floor under section 67(a).”
Licensure for travelers
A travel assignment in another state still needs authorization to practice there: a license from that state or, where available, a compact privilege. See licensure compacts, privilege vs license, moving to another state, and the CE requirements by state table if you will hold more than one license.
What this page does not do
It does not compare travel and staff pay, rate agencies, or give tax advice. Rules and examples are the IRS’s; ask a tax professional about your own situation.