Rural mail carriers

Rural mail carriers are employees of the United States Postal Service (USPS) who perform services involving the collection and delivery of mail on a rural route.

If you were a rural mail carrier, you can treat the amount of qualified reimbursement you received as the amount of your allowable expense. Because the qualified reimbursement is treated as paid under an accountable plan, your employer should not include the amount of reimbursement in your income.

Qualified reimbursements are the amounts paid by the USPS as an equipment maintenance allowance under a collective bargaining agreement between the USPS and the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, but only if such amounts do not exceed the amount that would have been paid under the 1991 collective bargaining agreement (adjusted for changes in the Consumer Price Index since 1991).

If you were a rural mail carrier and your vehicle expenses were:

less than or equal to your qualified reimbursements , do not complete this worksheet unless you have deductible expenses other than vehicle expenses. If you have deductible expenses other than vehicle expenses, skip line 1 and do not include any qualified reimbursements in column A on line 7.

more than your qualified reimbursements , first complete Part 2 of this worksheet. Enter your total vehicle expenses from line 29 on line 1 and the amount of your qualified reimbursements in column A, line 7.

If you were a rural mail carrier and received a qualified reimbursement, you cannot use the standard mileage rate.

Line 2: You cannot deduct the expenses of commuting to and from work. See the line 15 instructions for the definition of commuting .

Line 3: Enter lodging and transportation expenses connected with overnight travel away from your tax home . Do not include expenses for meals and entertainment. For more information, including limits, see Itemized deductions and review the 2017 IRS Publication 463, Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses .

For purposes of this line instruction, tax home means your regular or main place of business or post of duty regardless of where you maintain your family home. If you do not have a regular or main place of business because of the nature of your work, then your tax home may be the place where you regularly live. If you do not have a regular or a main place of business or post of duty and there is no place where you regularly live, you are considered an itinerant (a transient) and your tax home is wherever you work. As an itinerant, you are never away from home and cannot claim a travel expense deduction. For more details on the definition of a tax home, see Itemized deductions and review the 2017 IRS Publication 463.

Generally, you cannot deduct any expenses for travel away from your tax home for any period of temporary employment of more than one year. However, this one-year rule does not apply for a temporary period in which you were a federal employee certified by the Attorney General (or their designee) as traveling in temporary duty status for the U.S. government to investigate or prosecute a federal crime (or to provide support services for the investigation or prosecution of a federal crime).