Business travel - expensing refunded transactions
 

Say you’re in a hotel for work, paying with your personal credit card. You check out and receive a PDF folio by email. You take the hotel’s post-stay survey and express disappointment with some aspect of the hotel. The hotel contacts you a day later and refunds a partial amount, as a goodwill gesture, to your credit card.

When it comes to reimbursement from your client or employer, do you expense the original amount or the reduced amount that you actually ended up paying?

If any of my staff claimed expenses they didn't actually incur, they'd be out the door PDQ. I consider that fraud.

Clear enough for you?

Actual costs should be expensed exactly (or in the case of mileage, actual mileage). The employer would likely deduct this expense as reported by the employee on its corporate tax form, and its hidden partial reimbursement may expose the company to a tax violation.

However, if the hotel provides points as a goodwill gesture, those are usually given to the employee to keep, just as stay points are given by the hotel chain to the employee.

My latest Biz trip I got a night free for moving to a different location for that night.....I did not expense (or consider expensing) that night.......decent money too...

It's been tried before. Ask the NBA referees who went to federal prison for tax evasion for having purchased and submitted for reimbursement F air tickets (which their contract permitted) and then cancelled the tickets and refunded and purchased dirt cheap Y tickets.

Plain and simple, it is theft from the employer and tax evasion.

I'm not contesting your main point, but this NBA situation is a different ball game, and you're the champion of "analogies never work."

Whatever amount you end up paying, i.e. the reduced amount.

That's why point is a better goodwill gesture than a refund.

In that case, I will submit the full bill for reimbursement.

The hotel has not discounted your stay. And I seriously doubt that whoever reimburse you paid your Citi Prestige AF. On that basis, your 4th night free has absolutely no relation with the reimbursement.

It is still black and white.

This is not one of those silly analogies.

This is the same fact pattern. Presuming that the employer's policy is that actual expenses are reimbursed, then one needs to submit actual expenses. Anything else is, at best, the kind of thing for which employers ditch people.

Can I make a suggestion? Rather than speculate, why not ask your HR or finance department? If it sounds fair, then go with it. If it sounds like the company is taking advantage of you (eg, using the 4th night free when the company paid for 2 nights or something like that), then discuss it with your manager.

Every company is going to react differently. Why make it more complicated than it needs to be?

Many years ago I was part of a small team that made a decision about a similar example. A person travelling for work was seriously inconvenienced by the hotel. They gave feedback and the hotel determined that monetary compensation, equal to one nights accommodation, was appropriate and forwarded it to the person.

They had prepaid the stay with their corporate credit card and the compensation was sent to the person's personal card (which had been appropriately used for personal non-claimable expenses).

They immediately reported it and provided written details of what had occurred and the timeline.

It was determined that the inconvenience was a personal matter and that the compensation was due to the person for the way that the hotel had mistreated her and they were entitled to retain it.

The timely reporting and documentation ensured that there was no appearance of wrongdoing and by seeking appropriate guidance about how to handle the matter meant that all relevant matters were considered and that the outcome was made at a corporate level with no possible repercussions for the employee.

The key lessons were report it immediately, in writing and get corporate guidance as to how to proceed.

I think I'd let the employer know, just to test the waters and see how they treat you. This way not only you do not get into trouble but also do get to know where your employer falls: do they care that you got inconvenienced or would they keep your miles and points if they could.