Moving Expenses – Step 1

What’s New

For 2013, the standard mileage rate for using your vehicle to move to a new home is 24 cents a mile.

Moving Expenses You Can Deduct

You can deduct the reasonable expenses of moving your household goods and personal effects and of traveling from your old home to your new home. Reasonable expenses can include the cost of lodging (but not meals) while traveling to your new home. You cannot deduct the cost of sightseeing trips.

Who Can Deduct Moving Expenses

If you move to a new home because of a new principal work place, you may be able to deduct your moving expenses whether you are self employed or an employee. But you must meet both the distance and time tests that follow. Also, your move must be closely related both in time and place to the start of work at your new job location. For more details see Pub. 521.

Reimbursements

You can choose to deduct moving expenses in the year you are reimbursed by your employer, even though you paid the expenses in a different year. However, special rules apply. See When To Deduct Expenses in Pub. 521.

Filers of Form 2555

If you file Form 2555, Foreign Earned Income, to exclude any of your income or housing costs, report the full amount of your deductible moving expenses on Form 3903 and on Form 1040. Report the part of your moving expenses that is not allowed because it is allocable to the excluded income on the appropriate line of Form 2555. For details on how to figure the part allocable to the excluded income, see Pub. 54, Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad.