I was wondering if it is a requirement of a company to reimburse an employee for mileage driven beyond the normal to and from work commute? The reason I ask is I am in the I/T field and I get called numerous times to have to come in and perform some function after normal hours. Some one told me it is a federal requirement for them too, but my boss refuses. It really isn't that much but it adds up. Thanks alot for the help.

 

Most companies set their own reimbursement schedules. It can vary between job descriptions. It does not even have to be the amount of the Tax allowance. For example the rate a company pays is 25 cents/mile. The tax allowance is 34 cents/mile. You can claim 9 cents/mile as a non-reimbursable business expense on your tax return.

WARNING: The rest of this post deals with tax law as I remember it 12 years ago. It is not what you asked but it might help . I make no claims to its validity as of 2002

The way I remember it is the mileage between your home and primary office is NOT deductible. Does not matter if you drive it 1 or 10 times a day. The mileage to a clients from your primary office is deductible. Say you leave your home and drive 10 miles directly to a client for an all day meeting. Your normal commute to your office is 5 miles. The deduction for the day is calculated based on the distance from your office to the clients. So if you drive past your office to get to your client's office the deduction for the day is 10 miles (5 miles each way). If your client is the opposite direction of your office the tax mileage allowance is 30 miles. And the beautiful thing about tax law is there are multiple exceptions to each of the tax codes.

This might benefit some people on this board ... If you go to school to "further your carreer" the mileage from your office to school is deductible at the current year tax mileage rate. (You have to meet the requirements set forth in the tax code) It is a pain in the phuking **** to go through the different tax codes, but it is beneficiary. Some people love it ... call a tax accountant.

 

SVT-Snake

Interesting that you ask that question, I was just instructing one of my classes about that (I teach income tax during the slow season). Screwfun is correct in that Federal IRC cannot mandate reimbursements. They can only mandate substantiation requirements that determine the tax treatment of those reimbursements.

Therefore, the decision to reimburse your expenses is solely a monetary decision to be made by your employer. The IRC rate is currently 36.5 cents per mile in 2002, however reimbursement (if one was done) is available based on actual expenses rather than using the standard mileage rate. Again, these amounts refer to what is necessary to qualify for favorable tax treatment (for AGI deduction treatment for you) if such an arrangement existed, not what an employer must provide for a reimbursement, and not that an employer must offer any reimbursement.

Screwfun is also correct in that commuting expenses are a nondeductible personal expense under IRC Sec. 262 and the Regs. under Sec. 162.

The real issue you come up against is the fact that you are an employee with a principal place of business that is your work location. There's no arguing your way out of what you do is commuting. Now if you were self-employed, had your principal place of business as your home, or had no principal place of business or tax home, then things can get interesting.

 

cpadpl,

Good response, you do know your stuff.

BOB

 

Okay, so I guess I can still ask since I think the mileage charges will be directly billed back to the customer that I am working for and not to my company. The worst they can say is no. Thanks for the help guys.

 

like you are "on-call," after normal working hours. If this was an original condition of your employment, then you may be out of luck, especially if you are a salaried employee.

If you are hourly, at least you could get/demand call time from the time you left home until you got back home again. If you are doing this for "free," your employer is really taking advantage of you. How much of this crap could wait until "tomorrow?"

Or, if you are in a union, perhaps you would get a shift or "on-call" premium pay rate.

But, hey, if you're salaried you may be SOL. What a pain, putting up with this disruption in your life at all hours!