We just had our big annual conference, which requires many of our staff to travel and spend 4-5 days in another city. Now, in the pre-pandemic days, I used to travel for work pretty frequently, so I know all the expense report rules and what’s claimable and so on.
However, the head of our legal team apparently does not. He lectured several people in his department and others on expense claims, telling them they could only claim the full cost of their meals if they were eating with co-workers and discussing work. If they ate alone, or didn’t talk about work, they could only claim the pitiful per diem amounts, which doesn’t even close to cover the actual cost of food. Their breakfast per diem wouldn’t cover a breakfast combo at McDonald’s.
But that’s completely wrong. Any time you travel for work, any food expenses are totally covered as long as you have a receipt. The only thing that’s not covered is alcohol. He was mixing up travel expenses with the rules around “working lunches,” which are different.
Unfortunately, a bunch of the people he told this to took his (incorrect) word for it, since he’s the head of legal, and didn’t keep their receipts. They’re now stuck getting like $20 per day rather than the actual cost of the restaurant dinners we’re effectively obliged to eat during conferences.
It infuriates me that these people who are heads of the organization – and the ones who can actually afford to eat out every meal for a week – give their staff completely backwards information. And then those staff – the ones who can’t afford to spend $300+ eating out in a week – get stiffed on their expense claims.
I tried bringing this up with finance to see if I could get them to cut those folks a break, and cover their actual costs without receipts, but all finance said was that they could claim the per diem and “wow, they really listened to their boss.”
Well, yeah, duh. And now they’re being penalized for it. I have no power to change it, but it sucks.