Code of Federal Regulations Title 49. Transportation 49 CFR § 1201.1-16 1–16 [1201.1–16] Business entertainment expenses

(1) Salespersons' salaries and travel expenses, advertising, promotional and educational material;

(2) The conduct of shipper symposiums, conferences, meetings and traffic related functions;

(3) The use of direct mail solicitations and the publication and distribution of routing guides and service directories;

(4) Incidental promotional materials such as road atlases, calendars, pens, scratchpads, and other materials of nominal value;

(5) The conduct of business oriented lunches and dinners, public affairs programming, conferences and customer service calls;

(6) Sponsoring sales promotion functions, involving a number of customers or potential customers.

(1) Recreational or resort entertainment, including but not limited to, fishing, hunting, tennis, golfing, skiing or other sporting or recreational trips or outings;

(2) Expense paid transportation in any carrier owned, leased or furnished vehicles, planes, helicopters, boats, yachts, or other methods;

(3) Expense paid lodging in any carrier owned, leased or furnished motels, hotels, apartments, condominiums, lodges, rooms and other places of overnight accommodation;

(4) Paid admission to any sporting, cultural, educational, recreational, or entertaining occurrence or event;

(5) Gifts such as athletic equipment, food or liquor, beverages of all types, smoking materials, clothing and personal accessories;

(6) The furnishing of lunches, dinners, appetizers or beverages where there is no true business purpose;

(7) Social occasions such as holiday parties.

It must be noted that an activity listed above is not to be automatically accounted for as a non-operating expense. If a carrier can justify that the activity was primarily sales or marketing related, it may be accounted for as an operating expense.