Originally Posted by DevilBucsFlyer
Receipts aren't required for meals under $25. I seldom spend more than $10-$15 on my dinners (personal preference), so if I have some "unusual" expense such as paying for internet access someplace, I'll just tack it on to a cheap meal one day rather than separately identifying it on my expense report.
I just thought of another problem with padding meal expenses with "unusual" expenses. Generally speaking, your employer can deduct only 50% of meal expenses, even though they tend to reimburse you at 100%. So, they have to pay corporate income taxes on the other 50% (or it gets passed through to shareholders in the case of a Subchapter S corporation). So, any legitimate non-meal expenses that you "hide" in a meal reimbursement causes unnecessary taxes to be paid by your employer. Similarly, if you hide small meal expenses elsewhere, the employer's tax liability will be underreported, depriving the gov't of tax revenue it is entitled to.