Hard times means bigger expense claims
Fiddling expense claims is likely to become a major
issue, potentially costing companies hundreds of thousands of pounds, as
Government austerity measures start to bite.
Treasury forecasts issued
alongside Tuesday’s Emergency Budget show that middle income earners will lose
hundreds of pounds per year to higher taxes. “Some people will look for other
ways to compensate for their lost buying power. Mileage expense claims are an
obvious target because they are easy to inflate but hard for employers to
check. Legally, it’s not merely fiddling, it’s theft – but employees often
don’t see it that way, especially if managers have traditionally been lenient,
or too busy to police claims properly,” said Mr Jackson.
TMC
lists four ‘fiddles’ that drivers commonly get away with: Exaggerating the
length of journeys by rounding up to the nearest 10 or 100 miles or overstating
actual mileages. This is the most commonly used method for inflating mileage
claims and can be endemic in companies; claiming for journeys that the driver
made but did not pay for (e.g. two colleagues share a car and both claim the
mileage); making unnecessary journeys to
capitalize on over generous pence-per-mile fuel
expenses rates and Fabricating journeys entirely (for personal profit or to
compensate for an inadequate pence-per-mile fuel rate). “When drivers know that
their reports are being independently monitored, they take more care to report
accurate mileages,” said Mr Jackson. “In some cases, overall mileage claims
fall by 25 percent.”
22 July 2010
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