Compensation for travel time on a business trip
According to phonecations.com, employers are obliged to reimburse travel times that arise in the course of a business trip. To ensure uncomplicated billing, however, two factors are important:
- Only travel times that were necessary in the course of the business trip may be billed. Any detours and Co. are accordingly excluded.
- It is the task of the traveling employee to keep track of their travel times in the course of the business trip accounting. He bears the burden of proof.
A particular innovation was a legal change from 2018. This means that employees can bill for their travel time even if they did not work in the interests of the company during the trip. However, internal regulations may oppose this change for various reasons. You should inform yourself here early enough.
How much is the daily allowance for a business trip?
By law, additional meals are required in the course of a business trip went out. How high this is in detail depends on the respective destination of the relevant business trip. A basic requirement for applying for a daily allowance is that the respective business trip must cover a period of at least eight hours. In the course of calculating the daily allowance, work is then carried out on the basis of lump sums. The amount of the daily allowance, which can be billed during a stay in Germany, is 12 euros (for a business trip lasting between eight and 24 hours). In connection with days and on the associated basis of a 24-hour absence from the company, 24 euros were set. Under certain circumstances, for example, if the employee was fed free of charge on site, said flat rates can also be reduced.
Claim business trip for tax purposes
Not all costs incurred in the course of a business trip are necessarily borne by the employer. In this case, employees have the option of claiming part of their tax return. But how can the business trip actually be tax deductible? In the course of the annual tax return, the sums in the area of income-related expenses can be claimed. Of course, it is important that the employer in question was actually traveling in the interests of his company or his job. Classic examples of advertising expenses in this case are:
- Trips to customer appointments
- Seminars, workshops and further training measures
- Meetings
- Measure up
and other internal company events. Furthermore, the corresponding costs can only be claimed as business expenses if the company car was not used for this purpose. Costs that have already been reimbursed by the employer can of course not be claimed again in the course of the tax return.
Legal guidelines for business trips
In recent years, a uniform statutory regulation has dominated the question of whether travel time can also be financially claimed outside of core working hours. According to this principle, which was very beneficial to the employer, the travel time outside the normal working period could only be remunerated as working time if the employee worked during this time. Answering e-mails or reading a project description on the plane or company car only made it into the working hours if the tasks were given by the boss himself. Anyone who only listened to or read music at that time in order to bridge the time until arriving at the place of work had to spend this period as free time perceive. A new ruling by the Federal Labor Court finally shook this clear situation. The plaintiff was a technical employee of a construction company who was sent on a business trip to China. During the period of his absence , however, he was only credited with the normal daily working time of eight hours . Since the trip was solely in the interests of the employer, according to the judgment of the Federal Labor Court, it is to be remunerated like work. However, in this particular case, the building collective agreement also played a decisive role.
The calculation of the working time on site
If the actual destination of the business trip has been reached, the normal working hours apply to the employee. If the on-site appointments do not fill in the usual eight hours , these must still be paid for by the employee. This gives the employer the opportunity to entrust the employee with other tasks during their free time.
The legal situation is more difficult if the business trip does not fall within actual working hours. If this takes place on a weekend, for example, on which the employee does not have to fulfill any professional obligations according to the employment contract , then there is a separation between working hours and rest hours . Meeting with customers or preparing and holding seminars are counted towards working hours. However, if there is idle time between appointments that the employee can use for personal pleasure, then these hours fall within the range of the rest period. Business meals that are arranged during the business trip can become a dispute. The meeting with a customer or business partner clearly serves the company’s interests , so eating is mostly to be seen as working time. If the employee decides of his own free will and for private pleasure to dine with the other person, from a legal perspective the business lunch can also be rated as a rest period , which the employee is ultimately free to use.
