Other Tax Breaks Worth Knowing About
The 100-mile travel deduction is usually the biggest one a drilling reservist can claim, and it is what this site is built around. But it is not the only thing available to you. Here are the others worth checking.
Combat zone pay exclusion
Pay earned while serving in a designated combat zone can be excluded from your gross income. For enlisted members and warrant officers, the exclusion covers the full amount. For commissioned officers, it is capped.
The exclusion can also extend to periods of hospitalization resulting from combat-related wounds or illness. Designated zones change over time, so confirm your specific service period against the current IRS list.
The combat pay election for the Earned Income Tax Credit
This one is genuinely counterintuitive and easy to miss. Nontaxable combat pay is normally excluded from income — but you may elect to treat it as earned income when calculating the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Because the EITC phases in with earned income, including combat pay sometimes produces a larger refundable credit. It does not always help, so the election is worth running both ways.
Moving expenses for a PCS
The moving expense deduction was eliminated for most taxpayers, but members of the Armed Forces on active duty who move because of a permanent change of station can still deduct qualified moving costs. That can include moving household goods, storage, insurance, and travel.
Government-provided reimbursements or in-kind moving services generally are not included in your income, and you cannot deduct costs that were covered for you.
Filing and payment deadline extensions
Service in a combat zone or a qualifying contingency operation triggers an automatic extension of time to file and to pay — you do not have to request it. Extensions also apply to those hospitalized as a result of combat-related injuries.
This is relief from deadlines, not from the tax itself, but it removes the penalty pressure of an April deadline you could not reasonably meet.
Thrift Savings Plan, and contributing from combat pay
The TSP is the standard retirement vehicle, but combat zone service changes the math. Annual contribution limits are substantially higher while serving in a combat zone, and contributions made from tax-exempt combat pay get favorable treatment: distributions attributable to those contributions come out tax-exempt, though the earnings on them are still taxable.
Roth TSP contributions are made after tax, and qualified distributions are not taxed.
State income tax treatment
This is where the biggest state-by-state variation lives. Many states fully or partially exempt National Guard and Reserve pay from state income tax, some exempt drill pay specifically, and others exempt military retirement pay. A few have no income tax at all.
Two related rules matter for reservists who move around: the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act generally lets you keep your home state of legal residence rather than acquiring residency wherever you are stationed, and the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act extends comparable protection to spouses.
Free filing options built for the military
Before paying for tax software, check what you already have access to. MilTax, offered through Military OneSource, provides free tax preparation and filing software designed for the military community. Many installations also host VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) sites with volunteers trained specifically in military tax issues, including the reservist travel deduction.
VITA volunteers deal with Form 2106 and reservist travel regularly, which is not something every commercial preparer sees often.
One widely repeated claim to be careful with
You will find many articles stating that reservists can deduct the cost of uniforms and their upkeep. This is genuinely contested. The 2017 tax law eliminated the miscellaneous itemized deductions that historically covered unreimbursed uniform costs, and IRS Publication 3 indicates personal uniform purchases are not deductible. Yet military-facing guidance still sometimes describes a uniform deduction as available.
What this list is not
These are starting points for questions to ask, not a determination that any of them applies to you. Eligibility for every item above depends on facts we do not know about your service and your return. Publication 3, the Armed Forces' Tax Guide, is the authoritative free reference, and a VITA volunteer or tax professional can apply it to your situation.