Travel Time

HRinGA

I have an hourly employee who is traveling to our home office (about 45min) a couple days a week to help out. Please correct me if I am wrong:

We would pay him the travel time since he is assigned outside his home base along with mileage.


2nd question:

We have a weekly sales meeting for our outside, commission only sales reps. The reps that travel to this meeting each week are claiming mileage to the home office even though they are located about 20 min away. This is correct, right?

My Sales Director was questioning this as budget is tight.

I found the compensation answer on the DOL website, but didn't find anything specifically referencing mileage. I need to put something in writing and wanted some reference points. If not available, I can reference our company policies/practices.

ray a

I'm not sure about your second problem with the sales reps, being only 20 minutes away makes them seem greedy to turn in for mileage reimbursement. But, I don't deal with that situation.

With your first concern, yes you should pay him mileage. What we typically do is if the additional travel is in the general vicinity, we pay for mileage over and above their normal travel to their assigned workplace. So, if they normally drive 10 miles one way to their assigned workplace and we send them to a different location that is 20 miles one way, we pay them for the difference of 10 miles. If they are making a longer trip, for example to our corporate headquarters which is over 300 miles, then we pay all mileage incurred on the trip.

NaeNae55

When you are paying mileage you must keep the IRS in mind.

The employee who is traveling to the home office can get IRS qualified mileage if he goes to his own office first (coming and going). That is, if he drives directly to the home office from his home the IRS would see that as regular to and from work travel. They would not count it as reimbursable mileage. You can still pay him, but it is taxable income. Of course, if he goes to his regular place of employment and then goes to the home office that mileage would be IRS reimbursable. He would then have to do the same thing going home (go to his regular office first). If this employee just goes to the home office so many days a week to work, I would find some other way to compensate him.

Your sales staff are in the same boat. It doesn't matter if you go 2 blocks or 20 miles, as long as you are traveling for business reasons, and it is not your travel to and from home, it is reimbursable.

Having said all that, your policy on how much you reimburse is up to you. You can reimburse the IRS standard mileage rate (.445 until 12/31) and every thing is even. Or you can do more (the difference is taxable income to the employee) or less (the difference is a tax deduction for the employee).

Clear as mud?

Good luck!

Nae

WT

You have some pretty good advice here. In our power industry, there are some pretty far flung territories. Some companies have on site reporting. This means employees need to travel to where the work is in progress and report there. They are not paid mileage. Trucks or other vehicles are available on the site so transportation is provided after they report. Thus, once an employee reports to work, if they travel elsewhere, you need to pay them and provide transportation or pay mileage if they use their own vehicle. However, if they simply travel to another work site in order to report for duty, you are not obliged to pay for the travel.