"Reasonable expenses" though once in a while we need to remind people what "reasonable" means. A lot of people don't realise how good some of this expenses software is these days..

Got the word this week at work that $40 per day is now "reasonable" in most areas. yay.

$60/day for food, but $225 max for hotels, which is difficult in NY.

Back in my heavy business travel days I got the best of both worlds as far as my PD went. I got the usual $35/day, but on work days (5/wk) all meals were provided by a local caterer. I only had to buy for myself twice a week, so my workmates and I ate well those days!

We have a $400AU per day allowance, which includes hotel accommodation. I don't mind because I can normally get into my favourite travel hotel (the JW Mumbai) for around $200AU per night, and spend $50 max per day on food.

The company I work for are pretty good. We do very little domestic travel, and when we do travel it's for 6 weeks at a time to India (from Australia) in groups of 15, so they're fairly flexible with what we spend and how.

10 for Breakfast
15 for Lunch
25 for Dinner

need receipts for everything over $5

So do you have a set per diem, AND you have to justify it?

$50 a day for meals, no receipts required. Rather generous for a non-profit, in my opinion.

Its not uncommon to pocket $200.00 a week.

I get GSA perdiem and usually travel to DC, NY, Chicago, etc.

Anyway,

Stay at a fullservice Marriott or Rennaisance and you get Bfast and Dinner
if you have status.

This comes out to 6k - 8k a year tax free.

I spent over twenty years working for a company that I felt had a very enlightened and correct approach. You got an annual T&E budget. Size depended on how much travel you were expected to do.

In my case I was expected to be on the road about 40% of the time (domestically in the U.S.) and the budget was around $45k....to be used as I saw fit. While I had a lot of lattitude, it was closely monitored. I had to keep track each week of where I was versus budget. Travellers who were over got asked some tough questions. If you could justify it, you were ok. If not, you got your ears pinned back.

Guys (and gals) who thought they could outsmart the system to either pamper themselves or try to help themselves to some tax free income, sooner or later got a rude awakening. I'd look at my T&E as a resource. I approached it from the standpoint of "How much time can I get in front of my customers with this resource" "How many trips can I get out of this".

I'd plan my travel pretty carefully, but by being a wise steward of my travel funds, I never had to worry about needing to be somewhere on short notice, etc.

What did the $45K get me? About 16 mostly short-hop plane trips a year, and nearly as many road trips in my company car (which also came out of the t&e). The majority of my trips were 2-4 nights duration....staying in Marriott Courtyards, Fairfield Inns or similar. Breakfast usually at the hotel (freebie if offered), lunch would be with a customer, dinner would be soup/sandwich or small entree/beer usually at a casual sit-down chain or similar.

It worked out fine. Now I work for a different company, don't travel quite as much, and don't have a formal annual budget. But I still travel in the same fashion as always and my new company is 100% cool with it. As for the per diem question, my current bosses start asking questions when non-entertainment meals start running over $50 or so per day....$100-150 on hotels depending on the city.