Wow.

For starters, I think that you can definitely show that your husband intended to return to Philly - at least for the first part of the one year fellowship.

For unmarried taxpayers, the best way to show intent is with a signed employment contract for a job commencing back in the original city of employment right after the fellowship ends. For married couples, maintaining two residences during the one-year fellowship is another way to demonstrate intent.

The problem arises when your husband turned down the job in Philly and/or accepted the job in Tennessee. At that point, it was obvious that his intent changed, and he would not be returning to the city where he worked prior to starting the temporary job assignment.

So my advice would be deduct his travel, lodging and 50% of his meals for all six months of 2007, and then in 2008 through the date that his intent changed.

I hope this answers your question.

Zip Code: 01801

Thank you ever so much!

Because flights between Chicago and Philly were very inexpensive (relatively speaking -thanks to Southwest Airlines), my husband flew home roughly every two to three weeks. Just to confirm, is this the travel you speak of in your answer, or would the flights back and forth to his temporary job be nondeductible commuting expenses?

Zip Code: 37912

I found the answer to my follow up question regarding travel to and from the temporary fellowship job site at:

http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijlhe/vol3n1/taxes.xml

In a nutshell, it clearly states that all travel and living expenses away from home on a temporary job assignment (e.g. sub specialty fellowship) is deductible (e.g. lodging, travel, and either one half of meal expenses or the IRS daily per diem allowance.).

Thanks once again,

Zip Code: 37912

I'm glad you found your answer, and I agree with your interpretation.

I don't want to sound petty, but I wrote that article that you are referring to back in February 2003, which is available at: http://www.mdtaxes.com/news0203.html. On the article you found, it looks like I wasn't given any credit or a link back to MDTAXES. (So, did I sound petty?)

You can find an index of all the articles on MDTAXES at www.mdtaxes.com/oldnews.html.

Zip Code: 01801

FYI - the person listed in connection with that article helped us with PR back in 2003. This article was distributed through the site www.prweb.com, and she was the MDTAXES contact at that point in time. So I was not surprised to see her name and her company's name listed with the article on that link.

I was only surprised that my name and the MDTAXES site was not included anywhere with that article.

Zip Code: 01801