Raffles

This must be a tax issue, surely? We are, after all, talking about top end bloggers who can be assumed to have the qudos not to fawn and who readers trust not be skewed by a freebie.

Adam1222

Well, he said his free multithousand dollar ticket didn't skew his review, so it must not have. He just happens to love American so so much that special treatment has nothing to do with it.

kokonutz

I'm not a tax expert, so I don't know if comped airfare would have to be treated as income if one is a blog owner.

But I further wonder: if one owns a blog that writes about hotel and airline experiences then can the expenses occurred in experiencing hotels and airlines be considered deductible business expenses?

hobo13

That's a good point. I was offered (or won, I can't remember) a seat on the BA trip a couple years ago where they were going to promote business and entrepreneurship. You could go from various gateways in the US to LHR, and then connect further. But they were going to 1099 you at the full Y fare, and thus the tax liability was going to make the trip only slightly cheaper than just buying a discount ticket!

Adam1222

If one goes to Europe for a week, catching up with friends, getting drunk, and sightseeing, merely slapping together a few pictures on your blog and throwing some credit card affiliate links at the end would not make the trip a bona fide business expense. In tax law, for example, you can't deduct the cost of suits and ties because you need them to go to work. If a blogger were being paid for his trip report (and was paying income tax on that payment) , it would be different. But very few bloggers derive income from that.
A similar analysis would apply to compared travel. Did you use it to fly on a personal trip for you and your partner's anniversary in Paris? If so, it's not really a "business" issue (and if it were, it may still be income for your business). That being said, people get away with far worse than all of this.

Astrophsx

I think it's already been established that a majority of travel that is done by bloggers is done via award travel. I'm sure that the taxes and fees add up over the course of a year. Who knows what really counts as most blogs feature banner ads that supply at least a small stream of income.

Raffles

The taxation of free flights - or even writing off paid flights against tax - is one I have not fully got my head around.

At one extreme, if I buy a day return to Manchester from Heathrow on the new UK Virgin domestic services, doing an immediate turn-around at Manchester airport, and then blog it then this is clearly a 100 per cent tax write-off. The trip had no purpose except to provide material for the review.

If I stay overnight and return the next day, doing some sightseeing, can I still write off the flight? What about the hotel?

If I did a similar review trip somewhere where I HAD to stay overnight, due to flight schedules, does that change the ability to write off the hotel?

If I had decided to stay in Manchester for a week and take a vacation(very unlikely!) does that impact my ability to write-off the cost of the flight?

Can you write-off part of the cost, in such scenarios? Or is it 'all or nothing', with 'nothing' being the default if you can't justify a 100 per cent write-off?

What counts as a review for tax write-off purposes anyway? If I did the flight and wrote a one paragraph post saying I flew VS and it was rubbish, does that let me take a 100 per cent tax write-off? Or do you need to include photos of the airplane toilet (which would explain some blog posts!)?

It is a real minefield. There is no point in asking your accountant either, as they will also end up guessing!

oliver2002

Plus add in the very liberal US tax law that allows you to write off 50% with next to no receipts and the (more) stringent Europeans who require extensive documentation and reasoning but then allow 100% of the amount to be used.

sbm12

I do not believe that is true across the board, I know it is not for me personally.

kokonutz

Well if one gets a 1099 one better darn well report the income!

I think if I had a blog I would be tempted to write expenses off against a 1099 like that (and other income!), though, including mileage driving (or taxis) to and from the airport, parking, hotel stays where I review the hotel as well as paid flights where I take and post a photo of myself in the airline PJ's in the airplane toilet, under the assertion that my weekend in Paris or the Maldives or whatever was incidental to the business I was conducting of researching airline and hotel offerings.

Heck, since I fly a lot of Z fares for leisure travel, if these write-offs were acceptable to the IRS, I might be tempted to start a blog just to take advantage of them by turning my leisure travel into business travel! ^ Of course, that would require having some business revenue to write off...

nsx

I like Southwest Airlines. If they want to invite me to a corporate event once in a blue moon I don't have a problem if they want to cover some or all of my travel expense. I'm putting in my time for free.

Anybody who reads the Southwest forum knows that I can be as tough on their missteps as anyone. The forum's other frequent Southwest customers aren't shy about criticizing either. Maybe tougher, because they probably take it more seriously coming from their fans.

Our opinions aren't for sale. People who suspect that others would sell their opinions might be revealing their own weakness rather than others'.

That sounds reasonable, although I you might not even have to net out a comped expense.