Originally Posted by Cohiba

It's not our employers responsibility (or business) to interfere with our taxes. Technically, the IRS allows you maintain your own log and account for your expenses. Receipts are only required over $75. I had a random audit 2 years ago. I have an accountant (very very good). I use a spreadsheet and link each cell to the State Dept per-diem rate for each city. I scanned every transaction and kept it hyperlinked to each cell for each day of business. My accountant thinks I'm obsessive so he says it's ok for me to meet with IRS. The agent starts with a random set of questions (not a targeted audit) and we start working thru my business expenses. I'm actually confident because everything is hyperlinked and scanned. My accounting is flawless. But...the agent really wants a log from my employer. I reply that DAL doesn't provide one but I maintain a log which suffices. They don't care. In the end I purchased a log from Flightline and the IRS was fine with it. Ironically the Flightline product was more gracious in their accounting than my sharp pencil.

Originally Posted by forgot to bid

4 words: TURBO TACO POOP WALK.

Why you getting a salad? A taco salad? Like the Bud Light commercials said, congratulations, you just managed to cram 12,000 calories into a salad. Is it healthy? Sure, it's a salad! So go on you Conquistador of the Calorie, eat that salad... between legs.

Originally Posted by PilotFrog

What Flightline or PerDiem does is quickly go through your past schedules and figured out where you stayed the night. Then it figures how much you got, how much you are allowed and gives you the difference. ALL that information IS available to you to do yourself, I just like that another company is there to do it for me and save me the time. The company COULD cut the accessibility to these third party companies for security reasons, and say do it yourself, I don't think we would appreciate that.

Also don't the FAs get meals if their duty day (or total block) is over 8 hrs? One told me that and I wasn't sure if that was true or not, was on one of those west coast turns.

Originally Posted by tsquare

NOW fire away.

Originally Posted by DAL 88 Driver

Yep. You definitely answered your own question. Don't let anyone (including ALPA or "Capt Longsleeves") talk you into violating an FAR.

Originally Posted by casual observer

Why does our employer enable these outside companies to extract $50 from every pilot every year?

hear, hear

Originally Posted by RonRicco

I know you jest, but between Willies, Qdoba and Moes you can do pretty well depending on your goals since you get to choose the ingredients.

On Moes website you can actually go in and select every ingredient they have, on any item, and it adds up all the nutrition info for you. So say you are more into the meat and veggie thing, you can leave off the rice, beans and cheese and do pretty well.

Originally Posted by Doug Masters