How long a travel nurse stays in one place is usually a matter of contract length stacked against a federal tax deadline. Most assignments run 13 weeks. Nurses can extend and stay longer, but once work in a single location is expected to last, or actually lasts, more than 12 months, the IRS stops treating the assignment as temporary and every housing stipend and meal per diem becomes taxable income. That one-year line is what most experienced travelers plan around.
The 13-Week Default
Thirteen weeks is the industry standard. It matches quarterly hospital budget cycles and the length of many employee leaves of absence that create the staffing gap in the first place. It’s long enough to orient a nurse and get real value out of the placement, short enough that the facility isn’t locked in.
Shorter and longer contracts exist. Eight-week agreements show up when the gap is mid-range or the need is urgent. Twenty-six-week contracts appear for prolonged vacancies or large projects where continuity matters more than flexibility. These are starting points. What actually determines how long you stay is a mix of facility demand, your own preferences, and the tax rules below.
Extending at the Same Facility
If the hospital likes your work and still needs help, they’ll often offer an extension, usually another 13-week block. Extensions are common enough that many nurses plan for them from the start. Each renewal typically involves updated compensation and a new end date, but the process is much simpler than onboarding somewhere new.
Stacking extensions has real advantages. You already know the charting system, the unit culture, and where the supply room is. The downside is the tax clock. Every extension pushes you closer to the 12-month ceiling, and once you cross it, the financial math shifts sharply. Nurses who want to keep tax-free stipends count their weeks carefully and leave before hitting that wall.
The IRS One-Year Rule
The rule that governs how long you can stay comes from 26 U.S.C. ยง 162(a)(2), which lets workers deduct or receive tax-free travel expenses for meals and lodging while temporarily away from home for work. The statute adds a bright line: you are not treated as temporarily away from home during any period of employment that exceeds one year.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 US Code 162 – Trade or Business Expenses
IRS Revenue Ruling 93-86 fills in the details. An assignment in a single location counts as temporary if it is realistically expected to last, and does in fact last, one year or less. If the assignment is realistically expected to last more than one year, it’s indefinite from day one, even if you leave sooner.2Internal Revenue Service. IRS Chief Counsel Advice WTA-N-119911-99 The test turns on realistic expectation at the moment you accept the assignment, not just what ends up happening.
Here’s where nurses trip up. Say you sign a 13-week contract, extend it twice, and now you’ve been at the same hospital for 39 weeks. If you extend again and the new end date pushes past 12 months, the IRS treats the assignment as indefinite starting on the date your expectation changed. From that date forward, housing stipends and meal per diems become taxable income, and your employer has to withhold federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare from those amounts.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
There’s also a pattern rule. IRS Publication 463 warns that a series of short assignments to the same location that together span a long period may be treated as a single indefinite assignment.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses You can’t take one contract, leave for a couple of weeks, and come back to the same metro area repeatedly to reset the clock.
You Need a Real Tax Home First
The one-year rule only helps if you actually have a tax home to be “away from.” For travel nurses without a single permanent workplace, the tax home defaults to where you live between assignments, but only if you genuinely maintain it.
The IRS applies a three-factor test:
- You perform some work in the area of your claimed tax home and use it for lodging while doing so.
- You pay to maintain your home (rent, mortgage, property taxes) while also paying for housing at your assignment location. In practice, this factor carries the most weight.
- You haven’t abandoned the location. The IRS looks at whether you return regularly, whether family lives there, and whether you use the home for personal purposes.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
Meeting all three puts you on solid ground. Two gives you a decent case with room for scrutiny. Meeting only one means the IRS classifies you as an itinerant, your tax home is wherever you happen to be working, and you cannot deduct or receive tax-free reimbursement for any travel expenses at all.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses Nurses who give up their apartment, crash with friends between assignments, and don’t keep a fixed residence anywhere lose the tax benefits that make travel nursing financially attractive in the first place.
One boundary worth flagging: there is no IRS rule requiring you to work 50 miles or more from home. Publication 463 says travel expenses apply when you need to sleep or rest away from home to meet the demands of your work, without a set distance.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses The 50-mile figure you’ll hear from agencies or hospitals is a company or facility policy, not tax law.
Leaving and Coming Back
Nurses who like a particular city often ask whether they can leave, work somewhere else, and come back without picking up the one-year clock where they left off. It depends on how long you’re gone and the overall pattern.
The IRS doesn’t publish a specific number of days that resets the clock. What Publication 463 does say is that a series of short assignments to the same location that collectively cover a long period can be treated as one indefinite assignment.3Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses Taking a few weeks off between contracts at the same hospital, or slotting in one short contract elsewhere before returning, is exactly the pattern the IRS targets. The safest approach is a meaningful stretch working in a genuinely different metro area before you come back. Some tax professionals who specialize in travel nursing suggest at least 12 months away, though shorter breaks with real work elsewhere may also hold up.
Short Crisis Contracts
Not every assignment follows the 13-week template. Rapid-response and crisis contracts run as short as four to eight weeks and pay a premium. They arise during labor strikes, seasonal surges, natural disasters, or emergency facility transitions where a hospital needs nurses on the floor within days.
Strike nursing, the most common crisis subcategory, runs on a specific federal timeline. Section 8(g) of the National Labor Relations Act requires a labor organization to give at least 10 days’ written notice to both the healthcare institution and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service before striking.4National Labor Relations Board. The Right to Strike That notice window is what gives agencies time to recruit and deploy replacement nurses. The contracts are brief by design and wrap up quickly once the strike ends or a settlement is reached.
From a tax perspective, these short assignments are the least risky. A four-week crisis contract is never going to bump against the one-year limit. The tradeoff is logistical: packing, traveling, orienting, and potentially licensing in a non-compact state, all compressed into a much tighter window than a standard placement.