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BTW, in every other state if you are a federal government employee or a constitutional officer of a state, your perdiem is going to be dealt with differently by IRS than that paid by a private company to an employee or contractor.

Normally the states don't even bother with whatever part of your perdiem might be subject to taxes until after the federal analysis is run.

As everyone here knows perdiem covers your ordinary daily expenses while on travel beyond 12 hours, or even a shorter time if away from your home (domicile ~ a legal term) overnight.

Correct, you all knew that, right? It is divided into quarter day periods, so every day has 4 quarters, and you have to have 3 quarters (6+6+1 minute) to get to where perdiem is paid.

For federal government employees when they arrive on a flight at their domicile city their perdiem period STOPS the second the wheels touch the runway.

Their perdiem time doesn't start until departure time for the plane (which is different than the gate time). For USPS employees the times are computed differently, unless you are, for example a USPS employee on detail to a federal government agency (yup, lots of times), or simply auditing a federal government agency (like auditing IRS to make sure they've paid their postage correctly ~ some poor fellow gets to do that audit ~ I handled their appeals).

Then there are the various personnel interchanges between the Postal Inspectors and other federal police agencies. Guy could be on a joint agency stake out for 6 months and have his perdiem and expenses computed several different ways for the same stuff several times ~ and you thought this was a uniform system. Ha!).

I have no doubt everybody knew those parts.

Now, for the killer ~ USPS pays your hotel bills directly (through your credit card which they issue you), and your perdiem is handled separately (that's the cash part) except in Alaska, Wyoming and Montana.

I believe somebody asked if size has something to do with this business, and it does. There ain't no places neither, and that counts for more. Texas is bigger than Wyoming and Montana but you are never all that far from a town of some kind. In the three states mentioned above, you can be in places where you're doing an audit on somebody and they have a spare trailer or something ~ gotta' heat it up first, and chase out the coyotes, but there it is and no one has any idea who to pay for the stay. There is, however a perdiem rule that allows you to "pretend to pay" ~ at least I call it that. Right next to the rule flying a non-sched private airplane somewhere ~ that's under the motorcycle rules (with a side car).

Plus, there are military bases, weather stations, airfields and the like, where you might get housing ~ we actually had a couple of guys where we'd been ahead just buying them a camping van. Did buy'em four wheel drive vehicles though ~ there are some nasty roads in this country!

My understanding has always been that IRS will usually not touch your perdiem if you are a government employee or constitutional officer for the simple reason that federal and state perdiem systems simply do not compensate the traveler for all the expenses he or she may incur while traveling.

My experience in government travel has been that while some of it might have been exciting (missing flights that crashed for example) I never recovered all the costs. There were some folks who grew to love the travel part, but they were turning into alcoholics too.

I'm pretty sure the Alaska perdiem system does not compensate for all the costs ~ place is so big an average trip sucks up all your free time, plus, there's a risk flying around. Ask Cokie Roberts. Her father, Hale Boggs, died in a plane with Mark Begich's father, several decades ago.

Ever close out the per diem claims on a dead guy? You have to decide when they died and not a quarter more!