'Have you ever fiddled your expenses?' poll discussion

Pmarmalade

I've rounded my mileage up once or twice (private sector). Petrol costs had sky rocketed and we were still being given the same measly 40p per mile. I don't believe that covers petrol + wear & tear unless you have a very cheap-to-run car, which I don't. Company car mileage takes into account the engine size etc. while if you use your own car it's a flat rate. Travelling in my own time with no remuneration, btw.

I don't own a particularly fancy car, just an expensive one to run!

BlueAngelCV

For things I have to claim (travel, food etc) I underclaim and I would never dream of overclaiming.

I do sometimes take a pen home from work or print something off at work but I also sometimes bring in my own stationery.

timbstoke

I'm not sure I'd call it fiddling, but if I'm away on business, I do adjust my behaviour depending on the expenses policy. For example, my company allows drinks bought with a meal in a restaurant to be expensed along with the meal, while drinks bought on their own in a bar can't. This usually results in us finding a restaurant which serves good food but doesn't mind us staying for a few drinks on the same bill. Even on itemised bills, this is accepted and even expected by our managers. In fact, we're told to make sure we have a few drinks with any meals we expense so we don't make the rest of the department look bad :-)

Lum

My old company used to screw over the field staff in any number of small but annoying ways. Things like refusing to pay for lunch when you're up in Scotland for a whole week and normally bring in a packed lunch in the morning, refusing to pay overtime for travelling, refusing to pay for screen wash, refusing to pay for data charges incurred on personal mobile phones (official policy was to leave the customer site and go and find an internet cafe if you needed to get an important file for the customer), insisting we stay at Premier Inn but only allowing £5 for breakfast when the cheapest breakfast option at Premier Inn was £5.25

As a result of this the field staff would screw them for as much as possible, when it came to things like taxi receipts, meal bills and anything else they could get away with.


My current company has one policy that screws you over too. If you are required to take a hire car, they will only pay you 11p per mile but insist that you refill the tank at your own expense. This is bad in itself, it's just barely possible to achieve 11p per mile if you rent a Fiat Panda for your 12 hour each way motorway trek, but half the time you get "upgraded" and end up in an Astra SRi or something which just can't do it.

Some staff inflate the mileage figures to compensate. I just pull up at my local garage, work out how much I'll be reimbursed and then put that amount of fuel in. Most of the time the hire company doesn't notice if I ever get told off for it, I'll keep the receipts and expense claim details and ask what other procedure is in place to make up the discrepancy in cost that would occur if I'd actually filled the tank.

[Deleted User]

Most taxi drivers will give you a set of blank receipt pads if you tip nicely. Just saying...

I am usually very honest, although I will try to get the 'best out of the policy' by staying in a nice hotel, eating well when away from home.

Is keeping the quidco payment from an expensed hotel stay fiddling?

Lum

Depends how far you want to go.. What about loyalty card points?

I have a huge number of those free toy Ferraris that Shell were giving out when you bought 30 litres of V-Power. Do I have to give those to the company?

lolly-i-pop

When I was an NHS student on 3 months placement, I google mapped my route to the placement (was about 30 miles one way). I found a shorter, quieter route that was about 20 a couple of days later. I claimed for the 30 miles each day - i figured it would look odd if my route suddenly got shorter! A bit of extra cash did me well while I was a student. And now that I am working for the NHS they milk me for all I'm worth (so to speak), and I have more than paid them back with their stupid petty cash rules, governed by the invisible person in the invisible office!

TBagpuss

I'd feel too guilty if I claimed for something I wasn't entitled to. I would be furious if I found that a bill I was paying was inflated because someone had bumped up the disbursements/expenses.

I sometimes end up with pens and the ocassional pad at home, when I've been working in an evening, but I also have stuff at work I have paid for myself, and I've never claim back things like cost of phone calls, or printing documents on my home PC.

That said, I can see why someone might be tempted, if the expenses payable don't cover the actual expenses incurred. I had an aquantence, years ago, who was told by her employer that she HAD to go to [distant town] for a court case. On her employers instructions she went, and (also on their explicit instructions) stayed at a hotel for the 2-3 days ofthe case. When the case was billed, the claim for the hotel was disallowed and her employer then refused to refund the cost to her. She was earning peanuts at the time.

Had I been in her shoes, I suspect I might well have felt justified in seeking to recoup some of the loss by overclaiming elsewhere.

eddmac2

Today we see that some people have been getting higher than the 40pence per mile rate for driving their own cars on business related activity. I had thought this was a strict rule. We've been told that insurance premiums have risen by 40%. I am not sure what the rise in fuel has been since the 40pence band commeneced many years ago but i would guess it has doubled in this time. Who decides this rate and is it due for revision any time soon?

Lum

The 40p per mile thing is only a "rule" in as much as that was the limit for how much you can claim before you have to start paying tax. It recently rose to 45p per mile.

Employers can pay as much or as little as they want. If they pay more than 45p then the excess is treated as a taxable benefit. If they pay less than 45p you can claim tax relief on the difference.