Per diems are free money. Usually.

A per diem is the production covering your hotel, meals, and life-on-location costs while you work away from home. Handled properly — through what the IRS calls an “accountable plan,” at or under the federal rate for that city — it’s a reimbursement, not income. No tax. Doesn’t even appear on your W-2. The government literally publishes an approved rate for every city, and production accountants stick to it for exactly this reason.

Three things break the spell. Get paid MORE than the federal rate, and the extra is wages. Get paid outside an accountable plan (no receipts, no paperwork trail), and it’s wages. And if a location becomes your “tax home” — the classic trap is a gig expected to run longer than a year — you’re not “away from home” anymore, and the per diem is wages from that point on.

Here’s the part that sneaks up on people: the per diem itself stays clean, but the WAGES for those location days don’t. Work three weeks in Georgia and Georgia wants a tax return from you — a “nonresident” one — with your home state giving you a credit so you’re not taxed twice. The payroll company probably withheld some Georgia tax already, so part of the bill is prepaid, but the return still has to be filed. Shoot in three states, file in three states. The cure is unglamorous: a running list of where every dollar was earned, kept as you go instead of reconstructed in a panic each April. Keeping that list is, conveniently, our whole thing.