FDXer

I think the ones that will be hurt the most are ANC and LAX first officers. Routinely, the senior f/os with some bank money buy tickets to LAX and ANC because the jumpseats are limited. Now these will be counted as income and be taxed.

I'm a commuter and this is not a "deal breaker" for me. Don't get me wrong--I DON'T like it but I'm also not a one issue person. Read the whole thing first.

RedeyeAV8r

[QUOTE=FDXer;60726]I think the ones that will be hurt the most are ANC and LAX first officers. Routinely, the senior f/os with some bank money buy tickets to LAX and ANC because the jumpseats are limited. Now these will be counted as income and be taxed.I'm a commuter and this is not a "deal breaker" for me.QUOTE]

Agreed it might not be a deal breaker but it eats into the 3.3% pay raise.

It doesn't just affect FO's from ANC or LAX.......it affects Capts too as well as MEM based pilots who commute. When we fly into MEM from INTL Destinations......KIX, FRA, CDG, CGN ,STN and VCP those are all long flight that arrive into MEM around midnight. After I fly one of these, I'm too old to do a hubturn to a jumpseat home. I go to the hotel for a quick 8 and catch NW or UAL home the next morning. If I have bank money I buy a ticket. I am not the only one who does this. Those fares have now risen to over $400. I prefer not to wait until 1530 for the FDX Jumpseat as that is my back up. Sometimes on Sunday and Monday there is No FDX jumpseat. If I do this once a month.which is not that uncommon....that is $4800 extra taxable income. This money isn't Pensionable. So don't say it isn't a Big Deal, for many it will be.

Maybe it is an IRS ruling and maybe we have no choice, but don't any of you find it odd that this just became an issue the past couple months.

Wait until the (IRS) tries to put a value on a FedEX J/s when you ride it to work?. There was an effort to do this in years past but it went away....... Is it making a slow come back?

fedupbusdriver

Evidently, this has been the law for years. It will be up to each pilot to decide if they are going to go back through all of their tax records and declare those tickets as income or not. The big picture is, that if the company had wanted to, They could have looked back at your past and reported this to the IRS, but they are not going to. They have decided that by putting it in our contract, they have satisfied their obligation to the IRS and put it on us. This law has always been there, they are just covering their collective @ss so that they will not be audited. They could have just as easily put it in an fcif (don't know why they didn't just handle it like that) in order to make us aware of the law. It really has nothing to do with the contract, it is a law that is there on the books whether we vote for or against this TA.

fly2ski

At the roadshow Hilton MEM and the hubturn meeting, I went to both, the NC saved us all from what the company was going to do to us. It was going to happen and the FDX wanted to report ALL deviation money as income to the IRS and make you ,I, and all commuters deal with the IRS on this issue. According to DW there were alot of pilots at ATLAS that ended up with 10$ paychecks the day the IRS caught up with them. This seemed to be the best alternative to the NC.

FoxHunter

It is not new at all. The IRS has wanted to tax the passes that passenger airline employees get. They have wanted to tax ID75s and ID90s and they have wanted to tax all jumpseats. Yell too loud about the issue and it may get some attention again.

Bitme

"A pilot shall designate on his online expense report any claim for deviation
travel expenses incurred while commuting to or from his base. The amount
of such claim that is allowed/reimbursed shall be included in the pilot's
income as taxable compensation and all applicable taxes will be withheld."

This is the new wording. Sure it's a big deal, but you've been required to be doing this on your own before this, soooo if it's now a big hit then you haven't been going to the right tax guy or?

The other issue that keeps getting brought up is everybody fretting about a deadhead in or out Memphis (base). How do you not see the word commuting in the above statement. Come a day early to visit friends and then you're not commuting to work. It's up to you to declare this stuff, it's just getting the company off the hook for IRS interrogation. You may be under the spotlight though.

MaydayMark

The following is from Steve's 9-14-06 JetFlyer newsletter after he attended a recent hub turn meeting and expresses a different twist than previously discussed on this board. I hope his interpretation is correct?

This issue with the IRS rule was explained to us.

This IRS rule has been around for @ 20 years. Please see a tax attorney
for proper information. IRS considers an employee that has their travel
expenses paid for by their employer as income and therefore pay taxes on it.

How this applies to us is when we use our deviation bank to purchase a
ticket to get back to the domicile for purposes other that flying a
trip. (ie. Coming to training.) Travel for the purpose of operating a
trip does NOT apply.

This issue was huge to the Atlas pilots during the recent bankruptcy
proceedings. They have a "virtual" domicile system and all their travel
was considered income. There were pilots receiving paychecks that
netted @ $600 after the company withheld taxes for the travel.


Regards,

Mark

TonyC

First, there's no WAY this provision alone can negate the BILLION dollars contained in the TA.


Second, how you figure this applies to Memphians boggles my mind. It applies ONLY to commuting between your HOME OF RECORD and your DOMICILE. Until Fred starts paying for my gas to drive the I-240 raceway, this doesn't affect non-commuters.


You live in DEN. You have a double deadhead trip that begins and ends in IND. You deviate to IND, fly your legs, and deviate back to DEN. How many times did you commute to MEM? NONE. What do you pay the IRS for this? NOTHING.

You jumpseat to MEM for training. Penalty = ZERO

You jumpseat to MEM to start a trip. Penalty = ZERO

You use your deviation bank to buy a $400 ticket to MEM to begin a RES period. You owe the IRS taxes on $400 at your rate. So what? You owe them for the same thing you did last year and the year before that, and that has nothing to do with FedEx or Colorado law or the RLA or the phase of the moon. It's Federal Tax law. Now you'll be in compliance.


You're welcome!







.

fdx727pilot

Wow, a Tony C post I totally agree with! For those of us in Memphis, zero affect, unless Fred Smith starts filling up my gas tank. For you other guys, no affect, assuming you have been filing truthful Fed Tax returns all these years. Don't like it, complain to the IRS. As mentioned, they have gotten real aggressive lately on corporate compensation and hidden taxable income.

MaydayMark

Boy ... I'm shocked that you MEM guys don't have a problem with this issue (OK, I'm not really shocked, it has ZERO effect on you). Give me a break. If this is an IRS regulation, then it has no business in our contract. I notice they didn't write the requirement to pay federal income tax into our contract. This MUST be a ruse to get commuters to use a company jumpseat and save the company bucks!

Mark