Germany - Loyalty Programmes

[Dee26]

Hi,

German employees are required to disclose loyalty points received from business travel to the company.

The use of benefits and miles earned from membership loyalty programs for private purposes by the employee is tax exempt up to an amount of EUR 1,080 per calendar year. Therefore any amount above that will be taxable and we will need to report out to payroll.

Does anybody actually track this in Concur? If so, how do you track this? and is the tracking done on the Travel or Expense side?

Thanks!

[Munari_alEXPert]

Dear Dee,

very intersting question and probably impacting other countries for similar or restricted rules.

I have a question myself. Are those cards individually done by employees or done by the Company on behalf of the employees?

If done individually by employees, and so used for private and business purpose, I would guess is full resposability of the employee to declare to the tax authority once they do their tax return. You wouldn't be able to know the benefit based on the concur transactions.. Only the Airline company or hotel company could provide the rebate benefits, and would guess that employee would receive monthly a statement with the delta rebate. 

If is the Company issuing those cards, should be able to deal with the airline/hotel provider to see all list of benefits by employees.

Let me know if this clarify after having contacted the cards provider.

Kind regards

Alessandro