Airline pilot bookkeeping: per-diems, TL2 claims, and contract-pilot corp books

Employed pilots need records, not a general ledger

If your income is a T4 from one carrier, "bookkeeping" for you means keeping the documents that decide real dollars: pairing records and duty schedules, per-diem statements, union dues, licence and medical costs, and the logbook itself. None of that requires accounting software — it requires a system that survives the year, because the pilot who shows up in March with a shoebox of hotel folios claims less than the one whose records were organized monthly. We set up a simple folder-and-spreadsheet routine keyed to your bid periods, so every overnight and every allowance is traceable when the return gets prepared. One honest note up front: the commute to base is personal, no matter how far you live from it — a pilot commuting from Brampton to a Vancouver base deducts nothing for the privilege, and planning around that reality beats arguing with it.

Per-diems: usually tax-free, always worth tracking

Reasonable travel allowances paid by the airline for duty away from base are generally not taxable, which is why most per-diems never appear as income on your T4. Tracking them still matters for two reasons. First, if an allowance is flagged as taxable — or your actual meal costs while away genuinely exceed what you were paid — pilots are transport employees, and the TL2 meal-and-lodging claim exists for exactly this situation, with the employer certifying your travel on the form itself. Second, your duty records are the raw material for any cross-border or provincial-residency question, so the same log does double duty. US overnights add a small wrinkle — allowances paid in one currency and spent in another — so we keep the layover log in the currency it happened in. Reconciling per-diem statements against pairings once a month means the year-end file is already built.

T2200 expenses: the honest, short list

The deductible list for an employed pilot is narrower than most colleagues believe, and we would rather tell you that than file claims that fail review. Union dues come off automatically through box 44 of the T4 — no action needed. Beyond that, employment expenses on a T777 require a T2200 from the employer confirming you were required to pay costs the airline did not reimburse; items like unreimbursed licence renewals or required equipment only hold up when the T2200 says so. Recurrent training you pay for yourself, medicals, and uniform costs each have their own treatment, and the answer often depends on what your specific employer certifies rather than on hangar folklore.

Contract pilots: where it becomes real bookkeeping

Charter and corporate-aviation pilots, contract sim instructors, and ferry pilots invoicing day rates are running a business, and the books should look like it: numbered invoices per contract, GST/HST registration once revenue passes the $30,000 small-supplier threshold, and clean separation between reimbursed operator expenses and your own costs. Some contracts pay in USD, so we book revenue at transaction-date rates and let the FX gain or loss surface honestly instead of hiding in a rounding line. A one-client corporation flying someone else's schedule also carries personal services business risk, and the books we keep are the evidence base for that conversation. We run these files in QuickBooks Online with receipts through Dext — a lean stack, because a one-pilot corp does not need more.

The cross-border file rides on the same records

Canadian pilots flying for US carriers, or basing south for a contract, live on the treaty's rules for employment in international traffic — and the evidence is the same duty log and pairing history the per-diem file already uses. Keep one set of records, and it answers CRA, the IRS, and any state that asks about your days. The details live in our airline pilot cross-border tax guide, and the full monthly routine behind corporate files is on our bookkeeping services page.

Source: CRA — Form TL2, Claim for Meals and Lodging Expenses.