Posted September 19, 2018

With the recent tax changes from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, per diem deduction for flight crew is gone. This deduction was limited to 2% of your adjusted gross income as a miscellaneous deduction, and those deductions are gone for the 2018 tax year. Sorry.

The rest of this information is for legacy purposes only.

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WCG (formerly Watson CPA Group) has developed this free per diem calculator- created by a pilot for the crewmember industry. While this is generally used for taxpayers in the aviation or airline industry, all travelers might find it beneficial. If you need per diem rates including lodging, we suggest reviewing our Per Diem Methods and Rates page.

Pilot per diem and flight attendant per diem is typically a great tax deduction, when it’s computed and deducted properly. If WCG (formerly Watson CPA Group) prepares your flight crew tax returns, we compute your per diem allowance and deduction for you at no additional charge. No worries- We encourage Do-It-Yourselfers to use our program for a free per diem calculation.

International destinations (except Canada, Mexico and Caribbean) are not available in this calculator. If an airport is not listed, we will be notified by our web site, and we’ll add it right away. For pilots and flight attendants who have international destinations, we recommend www.perdiemcalc.com.

Once you enter your flight schedule, you can print the report, email the report to yourself or send the report to us for tax preparation. We hope you enjoy this nifty airline per diem calculator.

2017 tables are being compiled and were uploaded January 7! Remember, we only populate North America airports including Hawaii, Alaska and the Caribbean. If you need international per diem calculations such as LHR, SAP, NRT, etc., we recommend www.perdiemcalc.com.

As a side bar, nothing materially changed from 2016 to 2017 including fiscal year 2018 (which starts Oct 1 2017).

WARNING: We have had a handful of users have problems while using Apple products such as iPads along with Safari as the browser. We suggest Firefox for these users. And we also suggest perhaps entering only a few overnights, saving the schedule, and generating a report to ensure compatibility before entering the whole year. Sorry for the hassles.