- 15 - the incidental portion of those rates. Id. at 210-211. The taxpayer established that he had incurred incidental expenses during his travel away from home and was allowed to use the incidental portion of the M&IE rates to substantiate those expenses in lieu of providing actual receipts. The purpose of the Federal per diem rates is to ease the burden of substantiating travel expenses away from home, not to eliminate the requirement that those expenses be incurred before they can be claimed as deductions from income. Although petitioner contends that the Court has not yet addressed this issue, we explicitly stated in Johnson v. Commissioner, supra at 227: “We do not read the revenue procedures to allow a taxpayer to use the full M&IE rates when he or she incurs only incidental expenses.” Petitioner is not entitled to deductions for meal expenses he did not pay or incur. See Balla v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2008-18. He is, however, as respondent has conceded, entitled to a miscellaneous itemized deduction for incidental expenses as permitted in Johnson, and the applicable revenue procedures for the years in issue, but only with respect to those days when petitioner was working in international waters and for which he must include income earned.Page: Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: March 27, 2008