Originally Posted by Flying Lawyer

Correct. Tax law has no ambition to be comerically sound but it differenciates between your (tax-neutral) private life and your (tax-relevant) business life. Saving money is neither private nor business.

The taxman will ask what portion of the journey was private and what portion was business and can split the costs into a deductable and a non-deductable portion. You can get away even with HNL if you have business from Monday to Friday in the US, fly over to HNL and fly to the far East Sunday night to continue business there the following week. German tax office does not expect you to fly home in between.

Nontheless, I prefer to have meetings either with one of my colleagues from our 2000+ lawyers firm or with outside counsel or potential clients. Luckily enough my business is international enough to find always an alibi for every place on this wonderful globe and the German tax office will never be in any position to review whether the person I obviously met in HNL was really of any importance for my business (of course, legal business is people business and every contact can be important).