2026 tax year
Travel nurse taxes and deductions
The per diem and the tax home decide everything. Stipends are only tax-free while you have a genuine tax home you are travelling away from, lose that, and the untaxed portion of every stipend becomes income.
The tax home determines the outcome. Duplicating expenses, keeping a place you genuinely pay for while you are away, is what makes the untaxed portion of a stipend untaxed. Take a permanent assignment in one place for more than twelve months and the tax home moves there, retroactively.
The deductions with a rule attached
These are the lines where the answer is not simply "keep the receipt"each has a cap, a percentage or a test that decides how much of the spend you actually get:
- Per diem while away
- Tax-free only while you are travelling away from a genuine tax home. Keep no permanent residence you pay for, and the stipend stops being a reimbursement and becomes taxable wages, which is the single most expensive mistake in this line of work.
- Scrubs
- Scrubs, deductible only because it fails the suitable-for-everyday-wear test. That is the whole rule, and it is why a suit bought specifically for client meetings is not deductible however strictly the client expects it.
- Continuing education units
- Hours required to keep a license you already hold are the clearest case there is. Spending on continuing education units to stay current is deductible; the training that qualified you to start is not. The test is about where you are, not what the course teaches, which is why the identical enrollment fee can be deductible for you and not for the person sitting beside you.
The rest of the travel nurse deduction list
Ordinary and necessary business expenses, deductible in full in the year you pay them, provided they are genuinely for the business:
- Licensing fees
- Travel
- Malpractice insurance
That is what is specific to this trade. The larger deductions are the universal ones, see the full checklist.
What each deduction is worth to you
On $100,000 of profit with no state income tax, $1,000 deducted saves $305, 30.5%, because it comes off self-employment tax and income tax together:
| Net profit | Saved per $1,000 deducted | Effective |
|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $231 | 23.1% |
| $100,000 | $305 | 30.5% |
| $200,000 | $297 | 29.7% |
The last row is worth less than the one above it, and that is not a mistake: past the Social Security wage base the self-employment part of the saving drops from 15.3% to 2.9%, and the higher income-tax bracket does not quite make up the difference. A deduction is worth most in the middle.
Add a state income tax and every row rises. The 1099 calculator applies that layer.
What these words mean
- Tax home
- The place your work is based, which is not always where you live. Travel expenses are only deductible when you are away from it, so losing one makes previously tax-free stipends taxable.
- Per diem
- A fixed daily amount you can deduct or be paid for time away from home, instead of adding up individual receipts.
Related
- Full deductions checklist
- Every profession
- 1099 taxes by state
- Quarterly payments
- Is an S-corp worth it?
- Local income tax
General information about how these deductions work, not tax advice. Whether a particular expense is deductible for you depends on facts this page does not have, check with a tax professional before claiming anything listed here.