You certainly have a good point. There is quite some room, sure, but not enough for full-scale blatant abuse. Now, to the classification of your travel to the

You certainly have a good point. There is quite some room, sure, but not enough for full-scale blatant abuse. Now, to the classification of your travel to the satellite office. Here in Germany your employer has to keep records of sufficient detail to show the iirc. customs office (as they are assigned to keep an eye on this, as far as I remember), that you did not work more than 10 hours on any single day, and not more than 8 hours per workday on average over usually 3 months. So the time after those 8/10 hours are not work, and the tax office doesn't care much about where you spend your time off after work. Sure, it's a nice job (if you don't have a family), if you fly business class around to all the little satellite offices for just 8 hours or work, possibly even staying the weekend (as it is cheaper to stay than to fly you back home, which should be the point where it counts as compensation for taxes, e.g., the additional cost of the hotel, compared to flying you back and forth, would be counted as compensation). The champagne you drink on the flight, at least as far as it costs more than water, should/would count as compensation. The nicer seat shouldn't, because the increased comfort isn't really a material benefit. If they pay you a nicer seat than they can explain with less of a productivity hit, they might themselves need to argue differently for why they paid for it, when they themselves get an audit. And while I don't know the IRS, I assume they compare the compensation listed by the employer with that listed by the employee. So this would be noticed, and the IRS might well claim tax fraud. Sure, not everyone cares, but this should give them enough to go after blatant abusers.