Meaning of Travel & Subsistence exactly

It seems to me, anecdotally of course, that most employees will have their accommodation paid for from (and organised from) their company before or after they travel.

They will then of course incur the normal range of expenses in a stay wherever they are. Let's assume one week away in same-home-country.

So;
Week -1. Hotel booked and perhaps paid for by company secretary (as an example)
Week 0. Worker-Bee1 arrives stays and keeps all receipts for all expenses.
Also Week 0. Worker-Bee2 arrives stays and relies on Revenue Travel & Subsistence per-diem rates.
Week+1Worker-Bees 1&2 try to claim expenses individually, without falling foul of legislation and BIK.

The rules state it is either Per-Diem or Invoiced/Receipted expenditure of employee incurred expenditure, i.e. you can't mix.*. But if the hotel is paid for from Company funds (ie is a real cost, with a real receipt/invoice but for an expense availed of throughout the week Days 1-5 - - then the Per-Diem option is therefore excluded !?)

It seems to me that where there is any central management system of arranging stays anywhere that Employers should solely rely on invoices and not per-diem rates !?!?!!?!?

The travel to/from interim place of work can be paid by vouchers/receipted expenses but the stay while there can be per-diem (but this per-diem rate includes daily taxis to/from new work place); am I correct in this?


*A revenue example does allow employer to pay some actual expenses for the employee and employee to recoup their own receipted expenditure (ie the employee themselves doesn't have to pay directly all receipted/invoiced expenses)

.

.

Bumping this up ...

.

Not entirely sure what your question is about. Is this supposed to be a question about your own business expenses? Is this some form of thought exercise? Are you querying what your company policy is?

Drop the "Worker Bee" business and ask the question you have straight.

Each private company will have its own expense policy and they won't necessarily be exactly the same. You need to read through your own company's expense policy, that shoulf be your starting point.

There is no reason why a company could not use both invoicing and per diem for accommodation depending on circumstances.

What the per diem rate includes should be clarified by the expense policy.

Hi. Thanks for your input. We're setting up our company policies from scratch and my question is relating to exactly what are the precise Revenue guidelines. It is probably a pedantic point I'm raising. But I want to be sure of the exact guidelines so I can forecast any differences between Revenue Guidelines and our guidelines/policies. So no nasty surprises in the event of a Revenue audit.

My Worker-Bee scenario was to highlight how you can't mix per-diems with invoice/receipt/claims. This issue arises in the context of hotel being paid for by my employer but I'm on a daily rate; does this simple case fall outside the Revenue guidelines?

In the public service, which is based on revenue approved rates, there is a "day" per diem, so if the hotel was paid the employee would still get this for lunches and so forth.

Newbie-employee said:

Hi. Thanks for your input. We're setting up our company policies from scratch and my question is relating to exactly what are the precise Revenue guidelines. It is probably a pedantic point I'm raising. But I want to be sure of the exact guidelines so I can forecast any differences between Revenue Guidelines and our guidelines/policies. So no nasty surprises in the event of a Revenue audit.

My Worker-Bee scenario was to highlight how you can't mix per-diems with invoice/receipt/claims. This issue arises in the context of hotel being paid for by my employer but I'm on a daily rate; does this simple case fall outside the Revenue guidelines?

Click to expand...

Why not simply approach them and ask if they agree with your policy then?!

Thanks Jon. Its not an urgent task, and I only think of it outside usual working-hours. But your answer caused me to remember I have a friend in the Revenue and I've arranged to meet him next week.

Newbie-employee said:

Thanks Jon. Its not an urgent task, and I only think of it outside usual working-hours. But your answer caused me to remember I have a friend in the Revenue and I've arranged to meet him next week.

Click to expand...

This isn't something for a friend in Revenue to sort, you want it in writing from the relevant office that they're satisfied your policy as explained to them will fall within their statement of practice.

In the scheme of things I'll be looking for from the Revenue, this won't be high on the list. In the end if needs be, I'll have a tighter policy or a looser policy but draw management's attention to risks.

Newbie-employee said:

In the scheme of things I'll be looking for from the Revenue, this won't be high on the list. In the end if needs be, I'll have a tighter policy or a looser policy but draw management's attention to risks.

Click to expand...

Well depending on what level of T&S is likely to be paid, getting it wrong could be very expensive. Ask some of the contractors who have been audited in the last few years.

Yes, but if anything I'm taking an overly cautious approach.

ardmacha said:

In the public service, which is based on revenue approved rates, there is a "day" per diem, so if the hotel was paid the employee would still get this for lunches and so forth.

Click to expand...

Not really. The public service / Revenue approved rates are based around a 5-hour absence, a 10-hour absence or a 24-hour absence. The 24-hour absence includes accomodation, so there is no rate for 24-hour absence where accommodation has already been paid for.

OP - did you ever get an answer to your question from your friend in Revenue?

Plenty of detail on the Revenue website about this including all the rules and conditions.

dublin66 said:

Plenty of detail on the Revenue website about this including all the rules and conditions.

Click to expand...

There isn't anything that covers this particular scenario, where the employer pays for the overnight accommodation directly.

You'd be surprised how little detail there actually is when you work through certain scenarios from an international travel viewpoint. An easy anomalous/unforeseen situation are foreign employees (expressly, not salesmen) for an Irish company travelling into the Irish office - such travel is BIK under Irish law. However an Irish employee travelling on occasion overseas is covered i.e. no such BIK arises on his perhaps-identical travel expenditures.

(So it exactly works against trying to promote Ireland as an ideal country for corporate headquarters; best to have Irish employees travel overseas to meet colleagues, than for those colleagues abroad to travel to Ireland!)