Mileage reimbursement

[abv]

with gas prices soring, why has Concur not updated the reimbursement rate from 0.56 a mile that was from last year? Gas has gone up more than a $1 since it vent down to 0.56 a mile.  Thank you

[JessicaL]

Hello,

Your company chooses the mileage rate, usually based on the IRS standard. You can visit that site here: IRS Mileage Site 

They only update annually, on January 1st each year. If you feel the mileage rate is unfair at this time, you can contact your Concur Administration team. However, I will say that companies that deviate from the IRS mileage rate usually have a more difficult audit ahead of them.

Best,

[KevinD]

@abv you ask a great question. Concur purposely does not automatically update the mileage rate. Since our customers have different mileage reimbursement policies, we force them to choose their own rate. 

Think of it this way, let's say a company wants to reimburse their employees at .55 per mile. They go in and enter that rate. Then gas prices go up. The company is still going to keep their rate of .55 regardless. Concur then auto-updates the rate to .58 because of surging gas prices. Now, the company might not catch the auto-updated rate and employees are now getting a higher reimbursement rate. This would cause a lot of issues with people being reimbursed too much and a lot of back end work would have to be done to try and correct this error. 

I hope this makes sense. It is way too big of a liability for Concur to change the mileage rates automatically. 

[Munari_alEXPert]

dear @abv 

specific to the US market I am not sure of the tax rules there, but I would trust on what already mention by @JessicaL 

In most European Countries rates are standard and the same decided beginning of the year. Exceptionally the company may (but I don't see this happening) increase the standard rate, however the delta difference it would be needed to be reported as additional salary/gain for the employees, something probably payroll would completely try to avoid.

If I was your company, and hear many complaints about this real  issue, I would rather consider to provide an extra fix allowance for all the specific field employees impacted but never changing mileage rates.

Did you approach also your HR department on this topic which could be of a big impact on some workers?

[JessicaL]

Extra allowance is a great idea since this gas crisis is unpredictable as well. 

[Nancyagfa]

The IRS has done a mid year increase (some years ago), but it has to reach a certain breaking point with other expenses considered as well.  Mileage reimbursement is calculated by other factors including fuel, so if they are all not escalating, then the rate stays consistent.  You can monitor this on IRS website for any changes and updates.