Quick! Somebody warn the guy from Room Service! :))
Very funny! 
Iām generally too cheap to get room service. Gotta save for retirement.
H has had room service onceāwhen he was watching my infant niece while I and my sister (the babyās mom) were at the wedding reception downstairs of the wedding in the hotel banquet room. Iāve never had room service and since weāve been married, neither has H. We rather have our food at the correct temperatureāwith room service, I believe it is often NOT the ideal temperature, plus we donāt like the inflated prices plus tip that are expected.
@HImom, I am on the first day of a three week trip to the London, Frankfurt and Istanbul. I usually have a week a month in Europe. At least once every trip, I have a call back to the US at dinner time and eat room service during my call.
@dstark, we have solved the tradeoff between kids and us with a dynasty trust. Complicated to set up - too complicated to explain here. The trust is instructed to worry about the health, welfare, education and housing of the beneficiaries and can help the kids with various things and can do so now and not only after my wife and I expire. There is an independent trustee who makes decisions about disbursements but I am appointed as the investment advisor to the trust.
Iām the one who,provides room service to my family. I wake first, go down to dining room, and bring up food.
I find this thread really interesting.
Some 30 years ago, I traveled a lot for business, mostly to London, and occasionally to Singapore, Sydney, Hing Kong, etc.). Room service (and dining room) breakfasts are crazy expensive in those places and in the kinds of hotel we were put up in (I spent a kingās ransom at the Savoy for 3 weeks).
My co-workers fell mostly into two camps re room service. The smaller group felt that the prices were ridiculous, and they would wait to have coffee at the office. The larger group would order extravagant breakfasts; these were the same people who generally drank moderately, but at an open bar, they would become sloppy with the free booze. My view was that I was at the hotel for my employerās benefit, that I would have had coffee, scrambled eggs, and toast at home, so thatās what I ordered, price be damned.
Ugh for taxes! hereās what I spent 3 1/2 hours doing yesterday on the phone (hence a lot of CC while on hold!) -
I used to work for company A and had X shares of stocks in various ways at various points in time (stock options, outright grants, etc). A was bought by B at one point during my time there. So some of this was A stock from its independent days and some of it was B stock. B subsequently changed its name to C, spun off A so for every share of B stock I owned I got 2/3 of a share of A back again. So I have āold Aā stock and ānew Aā stock. Then C spun off its international and domestic businesses so there was some split there - so now Iāve got C (my renamed B) and a brand new D stock. Then A also split into domestic and international so for every A stock I had, I now had fewer A but a new E stock. With the most recent split of A, it wasnāt a 1 for 1 type of deal - we got some increased one time payout - so for tax purposes, needed to unpack this whole stream and figure out what my original shares were worth back in the day and trace all the splits so I could figure out the cost basis. So I spent hours on the phone with Investor relations at these companies to figure out exactly what splits occurred when. This covers a 20 year period from when I first got stock in A. And of course my memory fails me as to whether I actually ever bought A stock independent of what I got from working there, or whether there was ever a time when I sold a little of it for whatever reason. Not fun!
These are companies you would have all heard of in the consumer goods sector. A formerly great company to work for, now decimated by all the mergers and spinoffs but I digress!
@dstark Did you amend state tax returns too?
@Shawbridge, thanks for the info. Have a great trip. I saw your houseboat question. I did not know the answer to your question so I did not say anything. I am glad you liked your experience living on the houseboat.
@Madison85, thatās a great question. State laws vary and can differ from federal laws. I am in California and I could not amend the state returns. I do not get the state taxes I paid back.
thatās a bitch! are you SURE?
I have a GREAT Tax attorney here in Calif who could look into that. He deals with the state board of eq all the time.
Hes a former IRS judge- one of the best ! PM me if you want the contact info.
Yes. Iām sure.
Howeverā¦ 
Back when I travelled for work, my company would let us expense meals but not room service. That said, I do have a thing for high end hotel hamburgers and have been known to splurge on room service occasionally.
Thanks.
good luck !
DH is as cheap with his employerās $$ (and your tax dollars) as he is with his own. When heās overseas, he also has conference calls well into the evening. He knows where all the grocery stores are near the hotels he stays and grabs something to take upstairs. The various agencies will often have a group dinner or two while heās there, so he does get well fed periodically (and THEN goes back to his room for more conf calls). Foreign regulatory committees have many fewer constraints about the care and feeding of colleagues than does the US govāt. DH and I have catered lunch ourselves for some of his meetings where colleagues are traveling to meet him here ā as in we bought the food and prepared it! He has made enough goodies over the years that people now expect DHās baked goods to be part of the festivities.
He gets per diem for travel, but never spends it all.
As one of those taxpayers, please thank him for us, @CountingDown!
@CountingDown, my H is similar. He has meetings where he invites people in, for govt business, but he has to pay out of his pocket for coffee, snacks, etc. He has spent over a thousand bucks for these things before. Last time he went to the grocery store and bought stuff on sale, and just had coffee catered.
^^^Yup! The $20 limit on gifted meals doesnāt get you far in many major cities. I appreciate the fiscal responsibility and not wanting to make the agency look bad if someone ever wants to go digging for malfeasance, but sometimes it just adds another layer of stress. Not being able to have agency pay for a sandwich tray for a working lunch just seems penny wise and pound foolish.
Yes, I have been buying snacks for my nonprofit for over a decadeādozens of meetings/year. We donāt think about how much we spent and just consider it an unitemized donation.
Why? If I buy sandwiches or bring in a pizza for office staff, it is a tax deduction. I donāt do this weekly, but people appreciate the little extras.