Per stay, per assignment.

Indeed - William Collins, the former Chief Dental Officer in Northern Ireland was sacked and jailed for claiming the same expenses from the Government and from the Dental Council. Either body would have been happy to pay the expenses, but it was not OK for them both to pay the same expenses, leaving Mr Collins to pocket the difference:

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-12818053.html

I presume Mr Collins thought the amounts were small, the net effect to his employer was negligible and that he was too important to be called to account.

Welcome to FT, interesting first post after six years since joining.

clearly unethical IMO and arguably illegal, as others noted ... it's not the same as the example under discussion where the cost to the employer is the same whether or not the employee uses the personal upgrade ...

all you were entitled to is the cost to get you there & back and if you chose to drive, then its X miles x $0.xx per mile (whatever the current reimbursement for using a POV is).

^^:D

It seems to me that the perfect rational market value of the TSP payment
would be the cost to upgrade from the level of ticket bought by the
company. Then the person can either use the TSP to upgrade, or replace
it with the [obviously same market value] miles/status that is rightfully
their own to spend.

Obviously, this is not feasible, since that market value changes with
every trip!

--LG

Actually, the company saved $1,600 on the airfare and spent $1,000 of that per the policy. Like it does whenever someone authorized to fly business instead flies coach. Both the company and the employee are better off, but the employee B violated the policy by not booking the cheapest fare.

Although the company's total savings were only $600, co-worker B's travel still cost the company less $$$ than co-worker A.

A better policy (in my view) would be one that splits the savings evenly between the employer and the employee. If I wrote the policy, co-worker B would have been given $800, not $1,000. Co-worker C, who bought the non-upgradable ticket, would have received $1,500. That way, the employee and the employer would evenly share the savings.

If it were my company, I'd fix the policy. Why? Because it's capable of producing absurd results. What if the absolute cheapest available coach fare is $3,200? Employee opts to take $1,000 (your company's flat payment for opting to fly coach) and buys that $3,200 ticket and upgrades. Looks to me like the employee is better off by $1,000 but the company is worse off by $200. Unless your company policy prohibits buying coach when the price difference is less than $1,000, one could comply with the policy yet end up costing the company more $$$ than did the recently fired employee.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kettering Northants QC
$100 per stay or per day?

I'd have thought most relatives would be happy to have you for $3000 for a month.



that's awful!

Where did my post go that I put here earlier ??? :confused:

I seem to have lost a post on this thread too - not that it said anything that violated the TOS. I just said that I thought the OP's Director was right that there was an ethical issue: the compensation is for forgoing the privilege of travelling in business and suffering in Y. If you don't travel in Y, then you don't earn the compo. This is the way you initiate a general change of policy to fly everyone in Y - by demonstrating that people will trade down for far less than they expect the company to trade up.

But it's not; the compensation is for foregoing having someone else pay a large cost for you to be guaranteed travel in business class, and thus to save the company as much money as possible by buying the cheapest possible Y ticket. If the cheapest possible Y ticket is upgradeable and if the traveler chooses to spend his/her own miles/certificates/money to upgrade, then the company's policy has been followed and there is no ethical issue.

The compensation isn't there as a reward for some sort of self-flagellating masochistic mentality, it is there to encourage employees to act in a way that saves the company as much money as possible. If employees can preserve the maximum savings possible in a given situation, then there is no ethical violation if they choose to use their own resources to upgrade.

To me that leaves a lot open/difficult to audit. How does one have proof that C was $X and Y was $x-1

===========
In my own defense, the 2 x 300-miles of driving was on my own time at my
own expense.

I did not order up the Y-ticket. I walked into the office, it was handed
to me, with the words "be there Monday".

If the company did not think the value of my presence at the convention
was worth the full fare Y ticket, they wouldn't have sent me.

Having decided they needed me there, THEY ordered up the ticket through
our contracted travel agent. I didn't even know I was going until I
walked in Monday (no opportunity to whisper to the tvl agent to get the
full fare ticket).....indeed on countless other times, I sent back a
fullfare or nearly fullfare ticket and instead volunteered to come back
Sunday so that the company can spend $298 instead of $750+ for
a non-stayover ticket.

While the ethics might be gray (the company didn't ask me or require
me to drive and expense the mileage), without any influence on my
part in the issuance of the ticket, I certainly do not see the
illegality of it.

If the company had asked me to drive, the driving time would be
considered a work day and I'm not sure my salary for the time plus
the mileage expense would not come out worse for the company.

The company saved my airport parking expense for a week; 2 extra
days per diem, 600 miles reimbursement.

I didn't do the math (maybe I should have before posting this), but
it's possible that it would have cost the company more if they asked
me to drive.

Our state labor laws make a distinction between someone voluntarily
doing something and someone being required to do something, even
if the something is the same thing. (in this case driving instead of
flying).

Ok one of my posts also disappeared. What I said is my colleague brought an interesting point in that doing this would be like selling your upgrade/miles.

Double dipping is clearly illegal and unethical. We call it unjust enrichment,
and it is fraud.

But the moment we take a personal phone call on a company phone, use
a company pencil to write a note to ourself on a company Post-It Note,
use company lighting to read a personal magazine, haven't we stolen from the company?

Missing Posts
 

Just a note from a Moderator that no posts have been deleted from this Thread.
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Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

Yeah but your examples are minor/difficult to avoid. Your main example wasn't.

This sounds just like what several NBA referees were doing back in the 1990's. They were supplied first class tickets by the NBA to travel to games. They would cash in the first class ticket, purchase a coach ticket, and pocket the difference. The IRS went after them for tax fraud as that was considered unreported income. Prison sentences and hefty fines ended up being doled out to the guilty parties.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaE71-2/100.07.76; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Are payments under a TSP taxable? (reported to the government as imputed income)?

I suspect there's something more strategic going on. It's not just about saving money on a one off occasion, it's about leading by example and showing the way for other staff. If take-up is high enough, then as night follows day, the company travel policy will change and the payment will either be cut or just frozen and eroded by inflation.

Pretty sure they would be in the UK. I believe FF points are also a taxable benefit when they are accrued through work.

Even if that is the case, so what? It has no bearing on whether upgrading is ethical. If a company requires all of its employees to only buy Economy, with no incentive, it's not unethical for the employee to upgrade using his/her own resources. If the company merely suggests it and offers an incentive, then again, as long as the passenger buys the lowest fare possible to meet the terms and/or spirit of the TSP, it's still not unethical.

I would argue that if the company discouraged those who bought Economy under the TSP from upgrading, fewer people would do it than if the company said nothing or even encouraged people to upgrade... people are more likely to buy Y, incentive or not, if they think they can upgrade should they choose to. Therefore, if the company actually does intend on eventually instituting a "buy Y only" program, it should not prevent employees from upgrading using their own resources.

In the U.S., FF points are not taxable if they are accrued through a purchase, even if that purchase is made by someone other than the person accruing the points. Or, rather, even if they would be taxable, they are not taxed. The only time FF points are taxed is when they are "earned" without an accompanying purchase, e.g. through a sweepstakes. Money earned under the TSP would be taxable as income; FF points are not.

For the record, I was not judging you, just pointing out that you may want to be carefull. The difference was not that much anyway 600 miles = ~$330 in milage, plus the airport parking that was saved means you did not pocket that much. If you are salary, it would not matter if you traveled on your own time, if you get overtime, you may not have even come out ahead.
However, as an auditor, if I had discovered something like this (highly unlikely that this would ever be caught though) it would be considered fraud regardless of the justification. We did a large expense report audit a year or so ago, and the result was the termination of several employees, and alot of reimbursements to the company by employees who had found ways to come out ahead with their travel expenses. Again, highly unlikely we would have found out what you did, no audit trail.

I think the above post is key. World of difference between what is considered "ethical" by an employee and what is considered "fraud" by auditors.

I guess there are different companies and different policies. The company I work for right now is concerned not only with keeping expenses to a minimum, but also being seen to keep expenses to a minimum. That means economy flights and second class rail travel. And please believe me, this is causing pain for a lot of people, and I wouldn't help myself either internally or externally if I were to be seen travelling in higher classes - whether I pay for it myself or not, and whether I am doing it for work or for leisure.

Other companies may have different policies, but it's a reasonable guide to follow a director's instincts. Therefore, if the OP's director thinks there's something dodgy about taking an incentive to trade down and then upgrading at one's own expense, it is probably in the OP's own interests to follow that steer however unreasonable it might appear.

In other professions, appearances matter the other way. If you are a member of the latest boy band, you would probably do well to travel in F, even though your life-time career earning potential may not be spectacular and even though you will be billed for the tix by the record company.