Danielle Lackey

Mobile workers incur a wide range of expenses as they drive, from fuel and maintenance costs to insurance premiums and depreciation, and they must be repaid accordingly. Tracking, processing, and reimbursing accurately for these costs is not always easy though, particularly for companies with many mobile workers. Is a flat car allowance the right idea?…

Businesses are well-advised to be aware of the risks associated with mileage fraud. Unfortunately, many companies are unaware of how commonly mileage fraud occurs in businesses with mobile workers. Outdated mileage reporting methods — like relying on spreadsheets to track mileage without GPS verification — prevent companies from reviewing reports and detecting errors. Finance and…

Exaggerating the number of miles someone has driven for work is a form of employee theft. Although sometimes disregarded, employee mileage fraud poses a serious threat to businesses operating with mobile workforces. In cases of mileage fraud, employees are reimbursed by their employers for more mileage than what was required for them to perform their…

Employee integrity within the workforce is something desired by all, but sometimes it is inevitably unattainable. As it turns out, one of the most common examples of employee theft happens to be mileage fraud. In fact, mileage fraud occurs even more frequently than employees over reporting tips, inflating the cost of items beyond their true…

The standard mileage rate for 2017 was recently announced by the IRS, advising taxpayers of the optional cents per mile reimbursement rate for the year. It’s important for businesses with mobile employees to be aware of this announcement. The 2017 standard mileage rate provides a benchmark for mobile workers to calculate their reimbursement for their…

Reimbursement for mobile employees can be tricky and ambiguous for companies across the country. While an employee desires being reimbursed for his or her actual expenses, an employer just as equally desires increased transparency into the reimbursements it is distributing. California Labor Code Section 2802: California is a state that has seen this disconnect come…

The optional IRS standard mileage rate (or Safe Harbor Rate) is used for employees, self-employed individuals, or other taxpayers to compute the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business. If you’re not reimbursed for your business mileage, you may want to claim the IRS standard mileage rate on your personal income taxes to offset…

There are many reasons why the IRS may audit your organization, however, one area often overlooked is your vehicle program. Whether you administer a fleet or reimbursement program, the way in which you reimburse or charge back your employees for business mileage could be a red flag. It’s important to understand why the IRS would…

You may be wondering why the odometer reading in your vehicle differs from the distance calculated by an online mapping provider. The answer is simple: although vehicle odometer readings are close to the actual mileage traveled, they are not precise. Surprising to many, there is no federal law that regulates odometer accuracy, only guidelines by The Society of Automotive Engineers that allow for a margin of error of plus or minus four percent. A FOX19 report on odometer readings found that four vehicles of different makes all registered inaccurate readings. Some readings overshot the mileage driven, while others under reported the mileage driven. Even a variance of twenty feet per mile driven could result in a discrepancy of over five-hundred miles over the vehicle’s lifetime.

When it comes to mileage reimbursement, there are a few options that employers can choose. Options include: car allowances, the IRS mileage rate, cents-per-mile rates (other than the IRS), and fixed and variable rate (FAVR) programs.  The option that many companies choose is the IRS rate because it seems the most standard and the easiest….