On the Move? Many Expenses Are Deductible : Taxes: Be sure you qualify before you file. You may be able to deduct realty commissions and the cost of hauling household goods.

Spring and summer are the busiest seasons for changing residences. Last year, an estimated 50 million Americans moved, but many of them were not aware of and failed to use Uncle Sam’s generous tax break for deducting itemized personal moving expenses.

Just meet the simple eligibility tests and you can save thousands of income tax dollars.

To qualify for the moving expense tax deduction, you must both change residences and job locations. No deduction results if you change one without the other. For example, if you change residences but keep your same job site, no moving expense deduction results.

The job distance test. It doesn’t matter if you are self-employed or work for an employer, if you changed the location where you work you may be able to deduct your residential moving costs. To qualify, this test requires your new job location to be at least 35 miles from your old residence than your old job site was.

The distance from your new job to your new home is not important.

To illustrate, suppose your old job was 10 miles from your old home. If you are to qualify for the moving expense deduction, your new job location must be at least 35 miles farther away, or 45 miles in this case.

You can qualify even if the distance from your new job site to your new home is farther away than your old job was to your old home. It doesn’t matter if your new job location is with the same employer, a new employer, or you are self-employed.

If you passed the job distance test, your next hurdle is the minimum work time test. This means you must work a minimum number of weeks in the vicinity of your new job location. You need not work for the same employer and can be self-employed, but you must remain working in the area or you lose eligibility to deduct moving expenses.

If you are an employee, you must work at least 39 weeks during the 12 months after your move in the vicinity of your new job location.

However, if you are self-employed, you must work at least 78 weeks in the vicinity during the 24 months after changing job sites.

The purpose of this test is to prevent workers from moving around often and deducting their moving expenses. The IRS can be especially harsh in applying this test. A recent Tax Court case denied the moving expense deduction because the worker missed the minimum work time test by just two weeks.

When your 1989 income tax return is due by April 16 (April 15 is on Sunday this year), if you have not yet met the 39- or 78-week tests you can either claim the deduction and later amend your tax returns if you don’t meet the test, or wait until you meet the time test and then amend your 1989 tax return to claim the moving expense deduction. Most taxpayers elect the first choice, since they might otherwise forget to claim this important deduction.

Which moving expenses are tax-deductible? After you meet the job distance test and either meet the minimum time test or are well on your way to doing so, then you can deduct virtually all your household moving costs.

A recent Tax Court decision even allowed a taxpayer to deduct costs of moving his horse and a sailboat. However, there are two categories of moving costs, one with no limit and the other with limitations.

Indirect moving costs are limited to $3,000. This category covers moving costs that are not directly involved with the move, such as costs of house-hunting trips made before you move, temporary living quarters near your new job, and expenses of selling, buying or leasing your new or old home.

All or part of your real estate commissions fall in this category. For example, if you paid a $5,000 sales commission to a real estate agent to sell your old home and incurred no other indirect moving costs, you can deduct $3,000 of the sales commission as an indirect moving expense and subtract the remaining $2,000 of the commission from your old home’s gross sales price as a selling expense.

Direct household moving costs have no limit. All direct costs of moving your household are tax-deductible in this category. They might include items such as moving vans, renting a haul-it-yourself truck or trailer, air fares for family members, auto driving costs (either actual expenses or 9 cents per mile plus tolls and parking fees), meals (minus 20%) and lodging en route, and other expenses of your household move.

If your employer reimburses your moving costs or pays a flat moving allowance, this amount is taxable income to you. However, such reimbursements are not subject to withholding tax. Special rules apply to military transfers.