stifle

That and if you expense lunch, it's considered a taxable expense under UK tax law.

gj83

I'm glad I'm in a role where my company pays my expenses instead of my clients now. Before I saw some doozies:

Client is a good 30 miles from an airport with no hotels within 5 miles: rental cars need approval. Hotel was capped at $125/night but their negotiated rate at the hotel they said we had to stay at was $149/night+taxes.

Client had a $400 cap on airfare. Even advance purchase for most of us going there was $550. So I would drive 90 miles to another airport and incur an extra night of hotel in the city so I would have airfare less than $400 (although one time it was $415 and I didn't hear anything). I'm sure if I had spelled out the expense the people I was meeting with would have approved, but I had no clue how long it would take for them to get approval from their travel department.

I had another client who thought my flights were too expensive and I wasn't being prudent so they made me use their travel department. They actually did worse than I had so that ended.

My company is pretty good. Sometimes I'd like a per diem, but I only travel in conjunction with someone else so separate checks would be a pain. We just put it all on 1 tab and list names.

Often1

Sounds like a company which can't manage clients which is just as important as managing everything else. But, the fact that the company signed a contract with a client which reimburses the company at less than cost doesn't mean that the employee ought to take the hit.

Loren Pechtel

Understandable if you normally eat out when you're in the office. If you brown-bag it then it should be covered.

Loren Pechtel

Huh? My wife is a voracious fruit eater and the only thing she will pay even half that rate for is berries.

mdevans

I see nothing unusual about this. In most jurisdictions for expenditure to be deductable for corporate tax purposes it needs to be supported by a "tax invoice". Generally the format / content of a tax invoice is specified by law and requires certain minimum information. A credit card slip is not a tax invoice.

stifle

I think it is for value-added tax purposes rather than corporation tax, but yes, that's the logic.

mecabq

There will always be anomalies like this when you use a per-diem approach or any approach that is based on geographical or calendar boundaries. It's easy to criticize, but hard to think of a viable (manageable) alternative. The U.S. State Department per diems are, in my opinion, a decent system that covers almost all scenarios.

WHBM

In the UK at least it's for both. You need receipts in the relevant format to substantiate VAT reclaim, but also to demonstrate the business expense aspect of corporation tax calculation (this is a classic area for directors of small companies to put their holiday travel through the accounts as business expenses). They don't always get looked at but you need to have them just in case. The employee might even get hit for income tax on the payment if there's no adequate evidence of it being for reimbursable travel expenses.

Chap in our office once had his briefcase stolen with over £1,000 of travel receipts in it for the month. Accountant just accepted what he was able to piece together afterwards for repayment, but felt the company would not be able to reclaim the VAT as no receipts. However the tax inspector just said OK, wrote a note in the file, and allowed it. Sometimes the tax authorities do work sensibly !

Science Goy

Your wife can find berries for $0.90 per pound?

Often1

+1 - Whether one uses the US State Department's per diems (or GSA for US domestic) or another country's, the fact is that these are researched and generally fair. There are, of course, weird anomalies caused by jurisdictional boundaries, but there is nothing easier and better. In addition, what company wants to spend the same time & effort as a large government agency to figure out that it comes down in the same place?

It's also possible, if you want your people to live better than US employees on the road, to express the per diem as a percentage of the State / GSA per diems. For instance, 150% of whatever GSA alots and the like. Either way, these take account of the fact that dinner in midtown Manhattan costs more than in Podunk.

Loren Pechtel

No, I said berries are the only thing she'll go above that rate for.

dchristiva

Yes, I noted that my company has this policy. No more "summary" receipts. I have to show the itemized bill. Kind of a pain when I am eating solo, but I suppose it helps keep me in check.

I'm pretty sure companies that do this want to ensure that employees don't "drink their dinner" more than anything else. I don't really have a problem with it, but having to submit an itemized receipt means that folks can see that I had a couple of drinks even if I'm paying out of my own pocket. Guess I could request a separate tab for those.

Completely agree. ^

CMK10

I just got back from my first business trip with my current company. They let me run the refund back onto my credit card myself using our CC Terminal without even looking at my receipts

FXWizard

My wife, in her previous job, had to travel to the US for some specialized training. While she was working out the details she noticed that another course, also required, was being held a few days after the first course and it seemed logical to her to try and combine everything into one trip to save money.

Even with a spreadsheet showing the price differences between two trips with air and hotel vs. one trip with air and a few extra days there, she had a devil of a time making her "manager" understand that there was an actual cost savings - he saw the extra hotel days and his brain seemed to short out, so he never noticed that it still cost less because there wasn't the second RT airfare to be included in the total.

Of course by the time she made him understand and he approved everything, airfares had increased...so the company managed to save that little bit less than they would have if they'd just let her arrange the trip the way she'd planned it in the first place.