Travel
Conference and CME travel: paying for it, writing it off, and flying well
Most physicians travel several times a year for meetings, courses and CME. Done deliberately, that travel can be funded by your employer, made partly deductible, and turned into enough points for the vacations you actually want.
Who pays: the CME allowance
Employed physicians typically receive a CME stipend of $3,000 to $7,500 per year plus paid days. It is use-it-or-lose-it in most contracts. Negotiate the amount and the number of days when you sign, and ask whether unused funds roll over. Society memberships, board-review courses and journal subscriptions usually qualify.
What is deductible
- W-2 employees
- Unreimbursed employee business expenses are not deductible on federal returns under current law, so get the employer to pay directly or reimburse you. An accountable-plan reimbursement is not taxable income.
- 1099 / practice owners
- Registration, airfare, lodging and 50% of meals for a bona fide medical meeting are ordinary business expenses. The trip must be primarily for business; a conference attached to a week at the beach needs the days allocated.
- Locums physicians
- Travel between home and a temporary assignment is deductible when the assignment is expected to last under a year.
Earning and using points the way it actually works
- Put all conference spend on one premium travel card and let the employer reimburse the cash. The points are yours in nearly every reimbursement policy.
- Transferable bank points are worth more than any single airline's miles because you choose the program at redemption time.
- A lie-flat business seat to Europe or Asia on a partner award commonly costs 60,000 to 90,000 points; the same seat often prices at $4,000 to $7,000 in cash. That is the redemption worth saving for.
- Hotel points are usually best spent on expensive nights, not cheap ones.
Flying well on long-haul
For a 10-hour flight to a meeting, business class on a newer aircraft is the rational purchase: the seat lies flat and you arrive able to work. First class adds ground service and privacy, not sleep, and is disappearing from most fleets. Arrive a day early for anything that starts before noon in a time zone six or more hours away.
Private aviation, briefly
For physicians with multi-site practices or who cover regional hospitals, on-demand charter at roughly $5,000 to $8,000 per hour on a light jet occasionally beats a day lost to connections. Jet cards and fractional shares only make sense above about 25 and 50 hours a year respectively.
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