Using private aircraft for buisness travel use

[.Ben]

I am sure this has been discussed before but I cant find anything useful about it, my question is,

if I want to use my aircraft for business travel and want to be able to pay my expenses for such use of the aircraft what registration and licensing requirements apply?

I know if the aircraft is making money it needs to be commercially registered, does the pilot need a commercial licence even if the pilot is not going to be paid/reimbursed?

to clarify I Am not asking about making money with my aircraft I am interested in legally being able to recover fuel costs, etc if I am travelling for work.

[photofly]

That counts as private travel, and you can do it with a PPL in a privately registered aircraft. It's typically covered under your regular insurance policy, just like you can drive yourself on business and get reimbursed. As long as you don't claim more than the cost, it's not commercial.

[NunavutPA-12]

So what constitutes "cost"?

Fuel, obviously. What about a pro-rated portion of insurance, maintenance cost, hangar expenses, etc.?

[gwagen]

So what constitutes "cost"?

Fuel, obviously. What about a pro-rated portion of insurance, maintenance cost, hangar expenses, etc.?

All costs, including aircraft purchases I believe. Don't quote me however.

But you will want to distill it into hourly operating costs and not claim all of it for business travel if there was any other use of the aircraft, which doubtless there will be.

I believe what most people do is have their business own the airplane and then pay hourly costs to "rent" the plane from their business for private use.

Expect to be audited regularly apparently CRA sees aircraft expense claims for business travel as a big warning bell.

Be honest in your claims for use for business and pleasure as it seems to be a matter of when not if they come with the firehose sized colonoscopy scope.

I'm no expert, I fly strictly for pleasure, this is just what I've gathered over the years.

[NunavutPA-12]

Sorry for the thread drift, but ….
What about private use? For example: Your buddy wants you to take him to your favourite fishing hole for the day. We know he can pay half your fuel costs. What about half of all your hourly costs? i.e. annual insurance, hangarage, maintenance, etc. divided by number of hour flown?
Or would this be frowned upon?

[photofly]

All the answers are in CAR401.28.

[Panama Jack]

I am no expert in this area, but I have done some reading into this from US NBAA literature and even though these are two different countries, there are probably some similarities.

You would likely have two issues to deal with as gwagen points out- Transport Canada and CRA. If you are using the aircraft exclusively for business it would seem to be the most cut and dry- you should be able to claim all expenses- idealy the aircraft is registered to your business (it is a corporate aircraft).

The issue is when CRA deems that the purpose of your trip was not business related. Again, I am not a Canadian tax payer these days, but I understand that CRA rules and interpretations can be considerably stickier and can make dealing with Transport Canada a pleasure by comparison. As gwagen says, in the US "non-business" use of air aircraft becomes a "taxable benefit" to the user, so the way they get around it is by renting the aircraft from the corporation for the golfing trip or the family weekend get away.

Thats a nutshell version of the way I understand it, but hopefully somebody with a similar situation as yours can weigh in.

[Wilbur]

If it's just you flying yourself, you'll only need to worry about CRA. The people I know who used their airplanes for business travel all got audited by CRA. The ones that had no problems with the audit had well documented reasons justifying why using their airplane made the most sense, and they were more than reasonable in the expenses they claimed. Justifications included, for example, carrying items that commercial airlines won't accept, the airplane saved considerable time, their own airplane was cheaper than available airfares, etc. You have to know that CRA's starting position will be you are writing off your recreational pastime as a business expense.

[NunavutPA-12]

Sorry for the thread drift, but ….
What about private use? For example: Your buddy wants you to take him to your favourite fishing hole for the day. We know he can pay half your fuel costs. What about half of all your hourly costs? i.e. annual insurance, hangarage, maintenance, etc. divided by number of hour flown?
Or would this be frowned upon?

Found the answers in this thread:

http://www.avcanada.ca/forums2/viewtopi ... 54&t=56590