"An FF account is your personal account with an airline. Your employer is no more entitled to access that account than to use your personal credit cards."

You'd like to believe that, but you are flat out wrong. Miles earned on company paid travel CAN be claimed by the company. Fortunately, the hassle of doing so (and actually using the miles with all the restrictions and seat availabilty), makes it fairly rare"

"II MYTH
Corporations have no right to reclaim the frequent travel program awards earned by their employees.

TRUTH
Corporations have every legal right to attempt to reclaim awards you’ve earned while traveling on business.

Since frequent travel programs are first and foremost a way for airlines and hotels to ensure personal loyalty – regardless of who’s footing the travel bills – the plans go out of their way to keep corporations out of the equation the rules of most programs explicitly prohibit corporate membership, issuing awards only in the name of an individual traveler.

Unfortunately, just because airline and hotels don’t want corporations involved doesn’t mean employers don’t have the legal right to try to reclaim their employees’ awards. In a case decided by the Supreme Court of New York, corporate claims on frequent travel awards were ruled valid in cases where a company paid for and directed the travel of an individual employee on company business.

In other words, if your company insists that you turn over the awards, you can’t just ignore the request.

In practice, however, the number of companies successfully reclaiming frequent travel awards from their employees is extraordinarily low. Most have found the process of tracking miles and monitoring awards cumbersome to manage and nearly impossible to police."

From InsideFlyer

If you have to ask a question on ethics, you really already know the answer.

Sure, if your company has a policy letting you do such things it is fine, but then you don't need to ask.

If you intend to deceive, then, yes, I'd call that unethical.

If your intention is honest, then the act is not unethical (at least in my book).

Yes, but you can decide that you simply won't bother signing up for any of the programs.
+1 I once worked for a company that was very happy to reimburse me a percentage and let me use miles for some of my travel.

I'd never take an employees miles. My feelings on that are that the employee is traveling for me, leaving thier home, maybe family to travel for me. I don't pay for 100% of their time when they are gone (not aware of any company that does). So, it's the least I can do for their sacrifice to travel, it costs me nothing, and takes some of the sting out of being on the road.

But, some corporations do indeed keep employees miles and then pool them on expensive routes for rewards. I've also flown next to people who's company never pays for tickets, with the corporate credit card spending they always travel on reward tickets (which sucks for them, no mileage accrual).

The IRS has an opinion about the properly documented actual expense (yes, your company will be deducting this). May be hard to catch unless someone turns you in, but how do you look in stripes?

They got off easy with you just firing them. Just ask the NBA officials who were taken down by the IRS for tax fraud. They basically did the same thing and didn't pay the taxes on the delta in fare. The IRS considers that income and hit them hard.

There is no question about this. The existence of the question demonstrates that the action is unethical, not to mention that it creates an income tax liability for the OP and creates an audit exception for the company because they'll have an expense without supporting documents, given that the IRS non-receipt limit remains $75.

If the company approves it, doing it just makes the payment to the OP additional income, declarable on a 1099, or added to the W2. For the company it then will be salary expense, ie a bonus.

As an employee of a Big 3 Consulting firm this is a no-go situation. Without proof of a paid expense there is no reimbursement.

smaller company I worked for actually encouraged the use of FF miles for travel in order to pad project margins - now who was unethical in that scenario?

First you have to be up front with your company. Some will work with you and perhaps and give you partial reinburcement since you could be using the miles per a personel trip so that is still money out of your pocket.

Same here Re type of employer. Don't risk your job over this. If employer is cool, then try it out. But otherwise think of lost income while you are job hunting.

If you feel the need to ask the question then you obviously have some ethical concerns to begin with...congratulations, you've already answered your own question.

If you ask your employer and they agree, then it is fine (make sure to get it in writing/email), because keep in mind you won't have a receipt showing the dollar value. Plus for tax purposes the cash reimbursed to you for a non-cash expense may be taxable.

Upon rereading this, I focus now on "just how unethical" as though there are degrees of dishonesty. I think since you are trying to gauge the degree of it, you already know the answer. Unethical is like pregnate, there are no degrees of it.

I don't think I agree with this. There are varying degrees of ethics, and they can be invoked selectively and circumstantially.

This whole country works like that -- where businesses and consumers both try to push the envelope. E.g., what can a company get away with, without getting the attention of regulators? It somewhat fosters a consumer culture of trying to get away with things as well.

The "right thing to do" becomes very blurred in an adversarial system such as this. And it's not fair to expect one party to always play by the highest moral standards if the other party isn't going to play by the same rules as well.

So the way I see it, if the employer is fair and treats people well, they deserve the respect of being asked before doing it. If not, well, then it's up to you.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. Also note InsideFlyer's comment that "the number of companies successfully reclaiming frequent travel awards from their employees is extraordinarily low." [my bolding] There are always few outliers in any system, but what I said stands for the great majority of states & circumstances.

Our company offers a similar kickback (to appear on your W-2 ) for international business class in sectors where business class is allowed.