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that is for meals only.27 In such circumstances, it is not
unreasonable for the Revenue Procedures to treat the per diem
payments as covering only meal expenses.
Petitioner contends that the Beech Trucking per diem
payments covered not only the drivers’ meals but also their
lodging expenses and incidental expenses, such as the cost of
showers, laundry, overnight parking, and local transportation.
Assuming that the drivers might have incurred such travel
expenses from time to time, it does not follow that the per diem
payments necessarily reimbursed them for such travel expenses.
To the contrary, it appears that the subject per diem allowances
were insufficient to reimburse the drivers for all such expenses.
Because the Revenue Procedures permit deemed substantiation in
lieu of actual substantiation of the employees’ travel expenses,
the actual amounts and character of each employee’s travel
expenses are unknown and probably unknowable.28 In these
circumstances, it is reasonable and probably necessary for the
Commissioner to adopt conventions (such as those contained in
27 The portion of the Federal M&IE rate that is attributable
to incidental expenses incurred in all continental United States
locations is $2. 41 C.F.R. sec. 301-7.12(a)(2)(i) (1994 & 1996).
28 Indeed, it is conceivable that some drivers might subsist
so Spartanly on the road as to spend very little of their per
diem payments, pocketing the unspent payments as untaxed extra
compensation. After all, there is no requirement that employees
spend per diem allowances such as those at issue here for any
particular purpose or that they remit to the employer any unspent
per diem allowance.
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