With travel therapy becoming more popular for many physical therapists (PT), occupational therapists (OT), and speech language pathologists (SLP), prospective travel therapists often wonder how far away from home does a job need to be in order to be considered a travel therapy contract.
Often the people asking this question have a reason for not wanting to leave their home area, such as family ties or being locked into a mortgage or lease, but they still want the benefits that come along with travel therapy like higher pay and flexibility to take time off between contracts. They assume that living at home but taking travel therapy contracts within driving distance will give them the best of both worlds, but unfortunately it’s a little more complicated than that.
We hear from PTs, OTs, and SLPs who are in this situation all the time. Many of them want to take travel therapy jobs close to home, but don’t know how the process works or if that’s possible. If you’re in this boat as well, we’re here to help.
First let’s define some terms in regards to travel therapy to try to make things more understandable.
Travel Therapy Terminology
Tax free stipends: The tax free stipends are a big part of what makes travel therapy pay packages so lucrative. Travel therapists are eligible for tax free stipends for housing, meals, and incidentals when they travel away from home for work and meet certain rules for maintaining a tax home.
Tax Home: A travel therapist’s tax home is their place of permanent residence where they have expenses, business ties, and return to on a regular basis. If a traveler doesn’t have a tax home and does not maintain all the tax home rules, then they’re considered an itinerant worker and are ineligible for tax free stipends.
Itinerant worker: An itinerant worker is a travel therapist who chooses to take travel contracts without maintaining a tax home. They’re truly nomadic, moving from one temporary contract to the next, without any permanent residence where they return and at which they have expenses and business/family ties.
Local Travel: A local travel contract is a travel contract that a therapist takes close to their permanent residence. For a local travel contract, the therapist would be commuting to the job from their home. In this case, they would not be eligible for tax free stipends. This is because although they do have a tax home, they are not duplicating their housing expenses since they’re commuting, which is one of the IRS tax home rules required to be eligible for the tax free stipends.
How Far Do You Need to be Away from Home for a Travel Therapy Contract?
If you’re taking a travel therapy job as a local travel contract without tax free stipends, then there is no distance requirement at all. In this case, your pay package would just be structured differently than a typical travel therapy contract where you are traveling to a new location. Your pay package would be all taxed, more like an hourly rate at a permanent or PRN job. Although you won’t get the tax free stipends, the pay should still but quite a bit higher than a permanent job, and you don’t have to worry about finding housing or packing/moving like a traditional travel therapist. For some people, this is exactly what they want. Just keep in mind, there’s no guarantee that there will be an open travel therapy job in your home area in order for you to be able to make local travel therapy an option. Some areas are more well suited for local travel therapy than others, so it will depend on the availability of travel therapy job options in your region. If you’re curious about travel therapy job options in your region, it’s best to get connected with a travel therapy recruiter who can tell you what job options they have available and/or typically see for your area.
If you’d like to take a travel therapy contract as a traditional travel therapist in order to receive the tax free stipends and earn more money, but would like for it to be somewhat close to your home/region, then the distance that the job needs to be away from your home is whatever would be considered “beyond a reasonable commutable distance” from your home. This can vary significantly depending on where you live and if it’s urban or rural. That is why there is no exact guideline set by the IRS for exactly how far away from your home it needs to be. Some travel therapy staffing companies will use the “50 Mile Rule” as a rule of thumb to determine if the job is far enough from your home to be considered a true travel therapy job. But, again, this is just a rule of thumb and not an actual IRS rule. You will need to take into consideration what typical workers in your area would consider a normal commute for a permanent job. Then look outside of that radius. In addition to taking into account how far the job is away, if you would like to take the job as a traveler who is receiving tax free stipends, you must also meet all of the tax home rules. The biggest one to consider in this case is duplicating expenses. This means finding a place to stay and paying expenses at the location of job for the duration of the travel therapy assignment, while still maintaining your expenses at your place back home. Again, you cannot commute from your house to a job, no matter how far away it is, and be eligible per the IRS rules to receive tax free stipends.
Close to Home Travel Therapy Contract Example
A good example of this is the very first travel therapy contract that I took back in 2015 when Whitney and I started traveling as new grad physical therapists. We wanted to be fairly close to home for our first jobs to make sure that travel therapy was a good fit for us before we ventured too far away. I ended up accepting a job at a hospital that had an open Travel PT position about 70 miles from home. I kept the room I was renting back at home as my tax home, and we found a place to live closer to the new job where we also paid rent. Since the contract was outside of a commutable distance for our area, and I was duplicating housing expenses, as well as following the other tax home guidelines, I was eligible for tax free stipends and took the job as a traditional travel contract.
On the other hand, had the job been a little closer, and I commuted back and forth home each day, then I would have had to take the contract as a local traveler with a fully taxed pay package. I would have made about $300-$400 less each week in that case due to having to pay taxes on my full pay package, but I wouldn’t have had to pay for a place to stay closer to work. So as you can see, there are pros and cons in this situation.
Which Type of Travel Therapy is Best for You?
The great thing about travel therapy is that there are so many different options and ways to do things.
Maybe traveling away from home isn’t feasible for you due to family obligations, but there are travel therapy contracts open near you and you choose to take contracts as a local traveler. That’s wonderful!
Maybe you start traveling right after graduation and don’t have roots put down anywhere yet, so you decide to travel as a truly nomadic itinerant worker without maintaining a tax home. Or similarly, you decide to sell your home to cut down on expenses, and become truly nomadic. That’s great!
Or maybe, like us, you want to travel but aren’t yet sure how the lifestyle will fit you, so you decide to take a travel contract somewhat close to home, but still outside of a commutable distance to get your feet wet first, while meeting all the tax home rules and duplicating expenses. Smart move!
And of course there’s the traditional travel therapy route, where you maintain your tax home and meet all the tax home rules, while traveling all over the country taking travel therapy jobs in various places far away from home. The options are endless!
However you decide to travel, there’s almost certainly a way to make it work if you’re determined, do your research, and come up with a plan that works well for you.
If you need help getting started with travel therapy, our free Travel Therapy 101 series has helped thousands of new healthcare travelers learn the essentials to dive into travel therapy. If you need help getting in touch with some great travel companies and recruiters that will be a good fit for your situation, then fill out our recruiter recommendation form to get connected. Or if you want to just peruse some of the current travel therapy jobs available, then our hot jobs list is the place to go. Best of luck in your journey, and feel free to message us with any questions!
Related Articles:
- Travel Therapy: What is a “Tax Home”?
- Can You Find a Travel Therapy Job Anywhere in the Country?
- Pursuing Travel Therapy Without a Tax Home
Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT – Jared has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. He has become an expert in the field of travel healthcare through his experience, research, and networking over nearly a decade.
