Originally Posted by
cytog64
I've also been stewing on an idea of using my miles to buy business class and trying to get the travel/expense department to reimburse the coach cost (that would be awesome to be able to convert excess miles to cash in this way).
You may not want to pursue this. Someone on my team did this for whatever reason, and her reimbursement was flat out denied, so she was just out of her own miles. Our corporate travel policy was also immediately updated to reflect that the use of points & miles for business travel would not be reimbursed.
The rationale was that our corporate policy also specified that any points/miles earned due to business travel are fully retained and controlled by the employee. Our payroll/finance department considers them to have no cash value, and thus doesn't need to tax them as a fringe benefit. If that same department suddenly started reimbursing people for spending those points/miles, that opens an enormous can of worms that nobody wants to deal with.