Corporate card with no personal liability
 

I am looking for a corporate card that gives miles and that requires no personal liability.

My company is $100M+ profitable and over 30 years old.

Any suggestions?

1. Incorporate.
2. Sufficiently capitalize your company.
3. Follow corporate formalities.
4. Don't commingle your personal and corporate funds.
5. Apply for a mileage-earning corporate credit card. Get it.
6. Spend to your heart's content, so long as you follow rules 2-4, above.
7. Presto, you now have a mileage-earning corporate credit card with no personal liability.

(Of course, this post is not intended to provide legal advice to the OP or anyone else. YMMV.)

The terms of most corporate card agreements provide that the authorized users (like employees) are personally liable for the amounts charged.

Perhaps that could be negotiated away, but I doubt it.

I'd want my employees to be personally liable for all charges to their corporate card, but the OP's MMV. :)

I need a card where the corporation [with good credit] assumes all the liability.

Citibank said such a program might exist, but when I asked for more info they were unable to provide it.

There are over 100 share holders. The employees do not want to be liable since the company could someday declare bankrupcy.

Any ideas.

Do I understand correctly that...

-the employees are refusing to guarantee their own liability for charges on the company credit card that they are using
-the employees are requesting a corporate credit card that provides some kind of bonus (i.e., miles)

If I were the employer, I would say take it or leave it. The employer can return to a format where the employees pay their own expenses, and get reimbursed after an expense report is filed.

There are several recent discussions on the Amex forum about how Amex will not report corporate cards to credit agencies since the employees do not have personal liability. One Example

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=361091

I can't resist making a comment about liability and corp cards as it applies to me :

-my company (80000+ employees 100+yrs old multinational conglomerate) MANDATES that employees USE the CORP CARD for travel expenses
-my company INSISTS ON PAYING DIRECTLY THE CORP CARD
-and I am ALSO REQUIRED TO BEAR THE LIABILITY for that CORP CARD use ....

Isn't this a bit much .... (and I would add I cannot even collect miles of the corp card)

Add to that (although unlikely in mycase) the risk that the company might fold and leave the employees stranded and harassed by the bank for the outstanding charges .....

I understand that as the employer you want to impress upon the employee /card holder that there are responsibilities associated to having such a card .... but .... I would rather have a signed agreement with my employer saying that they can withhold pay to satisfy inappropriate card charges (and drag this in court if need be) rather than have this turn into a bank issue with the possibility of credit rating impact ...A disagreement over the appropriateness of a business expense (discretion of the employer) should NEVER turn into a credit rating issue !!!! (impact much deeper and longer term than what an employer status should allow)

An other, more frequent, issue is that of timely payment by the employer : I played a little game with mine , I formally complained about the policy, yet was told that "they would always pay ontime" ... Since then I received a "dear deadbeat" letter every other month from the bank because payment were not posted on the schedule expected by the bank ... I complained to my employer and was told "not to worry , it's a corporate card" ....

At this point as I see it I indeed have a choice :
-embrace the policy and stay
-leave

I wonder what would be their reaction when faced with a discrimination lawsuit by an employee that choose to leave !

Just my 2 cents

NO

The employees don't want to use their personal cards, the employees don't care about mile from credit cards :eek: , the employees do not want personal liability for company expenses is the company goes broke, the company trusts the employees and is willing to assume responsability for the employee's use of the card.

The company DOES care about miles for the better good :) The problem is that credit card applications require a personal guarantee.

Do you know of a true corporate card...miles and responsability go to the company?

No personal liability but miles do NOT go to company
 

One out of two.

We have an AMEX Corporate Account that does not have personal liability associated with it, only corporate.

The bill is addressed to the company and individual employees are responsible for reconciling their portion of the statement. (Matching up receipts, describing expense etc.)

The company then pays the bill and indivduals are not responsible for the payment.

Unfortuately, (for the company) miles do not go to one master account. Each employee earns the Membership Rewards points associated with their spending. Initially we had it set up to go to the CEO's account who used it for business related travel, AMEX later caught on changed it saying we should not have been set up that way.


This is a "mid level" AMEX corporate account (or something like that) not a Small Business Account.

The Authorized Buyer portion of one of the above statements is not all true.

If you are an "Authorized Buyer " under the Federal law you have no legal obligation to pay back any amount you charge on a credit card.

BUT if you are added as a secondary account holder then you are liable if the company goes belly up.

Example for a personal account: You are married (in any state beside WI) you have a credit card and you add your S.O. as an authorized buyer. They can charge what ever their heart wants and you will be stuck with the bill and they can't be held liable unless you have a signed contract with them but no matter what the bank can not go after them you would have to sue that person.

However if they are added as a secondary account holder they are equally as liable for the balance as you are.

The same principal is true with all credit cards personal or business. If you are an Authorized buyer you are free and clear from any liability as you have not signed any contract saying you are liable. But just make sure your company does not state " Authorized buyer or user " but then stick a co-applicant form in front of you.

(Of course, this post is not intended to provide legal advice to the OP or anyone else. ) thanks Ron in LA for the quote

Chase offers a a Visa (might have been MC) card that is 100% company liability, not the end-user.

Catch is that it was a Visa, so I think ours were $5k limits, which you could eat up quickly, but it wasn't a lean against your own credit report, your credit history didn't matter, and the company was on the hook, not the user.

They didn't need the user's social security number, either.

--Doug