WR Cage

The CRA does not publish per diem rates. Primarily because of the remote locations that are prevalent throughout the country. A bananna can cost $5 in Inuvik. However the employment standards act regulates that for 10 hours of work an employee can claim a meal or the employer pays out an extra $12 per diem.

I have seen numerous examples where the client agrees to everything in the multinational consutlants contract except for per diem amounts. At this point the client usually tries to inject their own standards and processes into the contract (e.g. client picks hotel and airfare). Then the client quotes the independants meal amount and cliams this cost is "reasonable". Again its almost always a drop in the bucket but the meal expense is usually the straw that breaks the camels back. For example detailed expense audit of 50k over the course of $5 million dollar contract.

Maigret

Not in my experience. Our team of consultants and engineers can be on site for four-five week stretches straight particularly during implementations and I can safely say they don't spend a lot of time shopping for food in convenience stores.

And to be honest I think this is a non-issue. Most of our clients see (agreed day rate +per diem)*number of days and pay the bill. They're more concerned about the total number of days and total cost rather than how much per diem a particular engineer got.

We also have an agreement with UK HMRC that our per diems reflect likely expenses and have never had a query for any of our staff, including the guy who managed to run up 332 days in a year.

roberino

How on earth did that get through??? In a year of 365 days there's only 261 working days and presumably he is entitled to about 25 days of leave, so that should be 236 working days. That's about 40% over subscribed! The poor bu99er must look like cr@p with a social life to match.

roberino

And I just realised that I forgot bank holidays...

Maigret

Working on a global roll-out of an industrial automation solution.

To add a bit of context

* at the time he was in his late 20's with no dependants
* we pay overtime over 40 hours per week with a percentage paid for weekend working
* install and commission is a three-four week process
* at installation he would work hard for a couple of days, stand and watch during commissioning and then do a bit more. We agreed a two-week on-site support post go-live which typically involves standing round watching the machines work.
* he still works for us although with a much more normal workload

There are probably a few FTers who clock 250/300 days away from home on a regular basis I would have thought. When I ran ERP projects I could do 250 days no bother.

What do you mean Bank Holidays - we call them maintenance windows

WHBM

This can be part of the problem, however, an agreement with the tax authorities (which is basically them saying they find you do your tax professionally and properly, you don't need to do all the accounting detail and, more importantly, they don't need to check it). However, they do need a written statement of how you are going to do it, and some accountants are then so precise about absolute compliance with that, as otherwise their agreement may be withdrawn. You've no idea what zealous tax inspector may turn up next year with an eye for detail.

Large corporate I used to work with got an exemption for supplying actual petrol receipts to reclaim the VAT on fuel for 800 cars. Until they got that they had to have paper receipts to back it all up. The expenses accountant used to have a dustbin (yes, a full sized one) that they kept them all in until accepted. Even the tax inspector apparently laughed. Fuel cards were not a workaround because of the different tax treatment of them.

roberino

Ah! Context! So he's an FSE or similar? I used to do that too.

So he must be billing a per diem on weekend days too then, and a lot of them. Still, he'd have to be working a LOT of weekend days. Did he get a full PD on weekend days too? And what about travel days?

I always got told that I had to take all public holidays/bank holidays/maintenance windows and at least 20 of my 25 days annual leave otherwise any days I worked above that I was basically uninsured and my tax code had to be recalculated. Not sure if that was correct or not but no one needs to tell me twice to out my feet up and forget about lasers for a while...

AlanInDC

Some colleagues have their spouses drop them off and pick them up at the airport. So if a colleague lives 10 miles from the airport, they would claim 20 miles of mileage, 20 miles X 55 cents/mile = $11, for the dropoff. Accounting said they can only claim one way, $5.50. I understand the issue in the narrow accounting sense. But the accounting department's solution is to take a taxi, which costs like $35 or $40, or to pay the one-way mileage and then pay for parking for, say, 5 days. So the costs would go way up and employees less happy (they always had the option of a taxi or parking).

So I tell my staff to charge the one way mileage and then bury the other cost, 5.50 in this case, someplace else on the expense report...

WHBM

This "you are uninsured if you do x" is typically a nonsense. I've seen many Employers Liability/Professional Indemnity policies, and they never have clauses that restrict liability like this. Occasionally there are completely reckless and unpredictable things that employees may do, and that's PRECISELY what the insurance is designed to cover you for.

pinniped

Do they provide a different type of housing for the longer trips? If I'm in a hotel for 21 days, then my food consumption isn't going to change for the longer stay. If I'm in a corporate apartment, then I can see some sort of lower food/bev per diem.

I actually did a lot of corporate apartment travel in the 90's...usually you needed solid confirmation that your gig was 3 months or longer and would have 1 month notice before the end of the contract. Even though I gave up the perks of hotel status and lived on a lower per diem rate, I loved having a "real" place and a real sense of living in the client city. I'd do it every time if I had the choice, but I wouldn't want to be squeezed onto a lower per diem without my own real kitchen and the permanence of my own apartment. (Even checking in and out of Residence Inns isn't quite the same...)

m3red

only provide a one way ticket (you have to pay upfront) when relocating even though a return is cheaper and then you have to pay 50% of the return fare if you book a return!

chemist661

I had one of my late relatives that would negotiate his own consulting contract. He was a retired Manager that was highly sought after.

He would negotiate a lower salary but a higher per diem. Per diems were non taxable but salaries were taxable. He lived in a high income tax state so that worked well for him.

His assignments were usually 9 months to 1 yr so he would rent an apartment for that period of time, buy used furniture & sell it when he was done.

Two examples in companies I'd worked for had ridiculous policies.

One policy was in the early 1990's at a company where I worked. My supervisor & I (supervisor was very decent) travelled to another site 100 miles away. We were told we had to room together. I asked what the maximum cost allowed for the hotel. ($100). I booked two rooms at the Red Lion for $49ai each. (supersaver special!!) Our combined hotel bill was under $100 for the two rooms. I caught alot of heat for that. I told them that I got both rooms under your limit and that I snored so the supervisor would not get much sleep in my room. (true)

2nd was the employer (different company) would pay for a certain hotel and taxis but not a rental car. (1990's). The hotel was about 25 miles from the airport and the client site was across that city. It would have cost hundreds of dollars to cab it back & forth. Lucky for me, I snagged a weekly rate of about $100 on the car rental (4 day conference) since I was going to stay some extra time on my own visiting relatives. (I had relatives nearby where I stayed for free on the personal days). The travel coordinator said it was against the rules but since my airfare was $200 instead of $1200 (my trip had a Sat nite stayover), the coordinator approved my rental car expense. I saved the govt employer well north of $1000+ by renting the car and staying longer to visit relatives. ^

I read several pages of this thread and it was interesting read. There are some really stupid rules to save travel expenses.

GUWonder

I had a manager whose finance folks would make a stink of my use of student tickets for younger employees, even as such tickets would save money overall and created no major problems with outside parties.

My director was fine with it, but the finance folks never were. Fortunately, the older school finance folks didn't run the show or they would have ruined it and wiped out budget savings and increased overall expenses.

Of my relatives and friends working for relatively young companies, many seem to have company staff book them using Hotwire for hotel bookings but never willing to do the Priceline NYOP hotel bookings despite the generally greater savings from Priceline NYOP bookings (if you know what you are doing).

falconred

Several of us have been required to fly SFO - CEB for our company. There are no direct flights, and travel time is a minimum of 20 hours (~ 18 hour in-flight time).

Coach only.

No exceptions.

gooselee

We are not allowed to make Priceline NYOP bookings as all of our lodging costs must be documented with a post-stay itemized bill (which hotels will not provide for NYOP since they can't disclose the actual rate they received, and the payment method wouldn't match anyway).