If your agency puts you on a W-2, this article is not for you. Most travel nurses are agency employees, and the deduction mechanics below are written for independent contractors. Tax home still decides whether your stipends are taxable either way — but take that question to someone looking at your actual contract.

This is for nurses paid as 1099 contractors, directly or through an agency that treats them that way.

The short answer

There is no 50-mile rule in the tax code. A full-text search of Publication 463 — the IRS publication that governs travel expenses and tax home — finds the phrase nowhere in roughly 300,000 characters.

What decides whether your travel and lodging are deductible, and whether stipends are tax-free, is your tax home:

"Your tax home is your regular place of business or post of duty, regardless of where you maintain your family home."

Where your family lives is explicitly not the test. Where you regularly work is.

Why the 50-mile number will not go away

Because agencies use it — and they are not lying to you.

Many agencies set a minimum distance between your permanent address and the facility before they will pay untaxed stipends. That is a policy they apply to their own programme. It is a contract term.

The distinction is worth stating precisely, because getting it backwards is expensive in both directions:
Does the IRS have a 50-mile rule? No. The phrase does not appear in Publication 463.
Can your agency require 50 miles? Yes, as its own eligibility policy.
Does clearing 50 miles establish a tax home? No. It answers the agency's question, not the IRS's.
Does failing it destroy a tax home? Not by itself. The tax home test is the one above.
The trapA nurse who clears the agency's distance test assumes the tax question is settled. It is not. The agency checked mileage; nobody checked whether a tax home exists.

The rule that does exist: temporary versus indefinite

Publication 463 draws one line that matters more than any distance.

  • A temporary assignment is one realistically expected to last (and that does in fact last) for 1 year or less.
  • An indefinite assignment is one realistically expected to last for more than 1 year.

And then the consequence:

"The location of the assignment or job becomes your new tax home and you can't deduct your travel expenses while there."

Read that again with a nurse's contract in mind. Your tax home does not merely fail a test — it moves. The place you have been treating as a temporary posting becomes home, and the travel costs to be there stop being travel costs.

The extension is the decision point

Thirteen weeks is comfortably temporary. Thirteen weeks extended four times is a year. Extended once more, it is not.

The test is on what is realistically expected, so the moment expectations change is the moment the classification changes — not the moment you pass the 365th day. An extension offer that would carry you past a year is a tax decision wearing the clothes of a scheduling decision.

Note the wording carries two requirements: realistically expected to last a year or less and in fact lasting a year or less. An assignment everyone expected to be short that runs long is not saved by the original expectation.

When you have no regular place of work

Many contract nurses do not have one. Publication 463 then applies three factors:

  1. "You perform part of your business in the area of your main home and use that home for lodging"
  2. "You have living expenses at your main home that you duplicate because your business requires you to be away"
  3. "You haven't abandoned the area... you have a member or members of your family living at your main home, or you often use that home for lodging"

The outcomes are stated plainly, and the third one is the part nobody mentions:

Factors satisfied Result
All three "your tax home is the home where you regularly live"
Two "you may have a tax home depending on all the facts and circumstances"
One "you are an itinerant; your tax home is wherever you work and you can't deduct travel expenses"

Itinerant is the word to sit with. It does not mean you get a smaller deduction. It means your tax home follows you to whatever facility you are at, there is no "away" to be away from, and travel and lodging deductions are gone entirely.

A nurse who gave up the apartment, has no family home to return to, and simply moves between contracts has satisfied one factor and may well be itinerant — regardless of how far apart the assignments are.

"Away from home" needs both conditions

Even with a solid tax home, the travel itself has to qualify. Both of these must hold:

  • "Your duties require you to be away from the general area of your tax home substantially longer than an ordinary day's work", and
  • "You need to sleep or rest to meet the demands of your work while away from home."

A long shift at a facility ninety minutes away is not travel away from home. Distance alone never was the test.

What to keep, starting now

Tax home is a facts-and-circumstances question. That phrase means the answer is built from records, and records cannot be built backwards.

  1. Keep evidence of ties to your main home — lease or mortgage, utility bills in your name, voter and licence registration, the dates you actually stayed there.
  2. Record duplicated living costs with dates, not just amounts. Factor two is about duplication while you are required to be away.
  3. Keep every contract and every extension, with the date the extension was offered. That paper trail is what establishes what was realistically expected, and when.
  4. Track when an assignment's expected end passes a year — and treat it as a question to raise before signing, not after.
  5. Separate what your agency required from what the IRS requires. Their distance policy belongs in your file; it is not evidence of a tax home.
  6. Keep trip dates with your mileage. The IRS lists two business standard mileage rates for 2026 — 72.5 cents per mile from January 1 through June 30, and 76 cents from July 1 through December 31 — so the date on each trip decides the rate.

None of this is difficult. All of it is impossible to reconstruct in April, which is exactly when the question gets asked.

Track it now. Thank yourself in April.

Common questions

Is there a 50-mile rule for travel nurses?
Not in the tax rules. A full-text search of IRS Publication 463 — the publication that governs travel expenses and tax home — returns no mention of 50 miles at all. Agencies do commonly impose a distance requirement as their own policy for stipend eligibility, which is a contract term, not a tax rule. Meeting your agency's distance test does not establish a tax home, and failing it does not by itself destroy one.
What is a tax home?
Publication 463 states: "Your tax home is your regular place of business or post of duty, regardless of where you maintain your family home." It is about where you work, not where your family lives.
What is the one-year rule?
An assignment realistically expected to last, and in fact lasting, one year or less is temporary. One realistically expected to last more than a year is indefinite. Publication 463 states that when an assignment is indefinite, "the location of the assignment or job becomes your new tax home and you can't deduct your travel expenses while there."
What happens if my 13-week contract keeps getting extended?
The test turns on what is realistically expected. Once it is realistically expected to run beyond a year, the assignment is indefinite from that point — so extensions are the moment to reassess, not a formality to sign.
What if I have no regular place of work?
Publication 463 gives three factors. Satisfy all three and "your tax home is the home where you regularly live." Satisfy two and "you may have a tax home depending on all the facts and circumstances." Satisfy only one and "you are an itinerant; your tax home is wherever you work and you can't deduct travel expenses."
What does it mean to be away from home?
Both conditions must hold: your duties require you to be away from the general area of your tax home substantially longer than an ordinary day's work, and you need to sleep or rest to meet the demands of your work while away.
Does keeping an apartment I never visit protect my tax home?
Not on its own. Duplicating living expenses is one of the three factors, not the whole test, and the third factor asks whether you have actually kept ties to the area. An empty apartment with no other connection is a weak answer to a facts-and-circumstances question.

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a qualified tax professional about your situation.

Official sources