pinniped

I worked for one firm about 10 years ago that provided you a budget based on the client location and your "home" location. You could fly elsewhere using that budget if you chose, but the value of those flights automatically became taxable if they weren't to your tax home. I think there were some other rules about the tax home...it had to be a physical street address and otherwise meet legal requirements as a "residence". (A lot of us were traveling 100% of the time, so it could easily be your buddy's apartment... But you couldn't just throw a PO Box in a no-income-tax state and call it good.)

For us, it was pretty clear-cut because we tended to be on long-term assignments, buying Friday-to-Monday roundtrip tickets. So that allowance for a given citypair, especially with hefty corporate discounts, was usually pretty low. For example, my usual DCA-MCI-DCA roundtrip on US Airways was regularly in the sub-$150 R/T range all in in the late 1990's.

I didn't have that situation of moving on to different cities each week. Wonder if the traveler could book MSP-NYC-WAS on a single PNR with a two-day stopover in NYC...