Claiming expenses: here’s how it works in real world

AS a former outbound salesperson, I am familiar with expense claims. At its simplest, when you travel you spend your own money on hotels, meals, petrol, etc, collect every receipt and then at month’s end you fill out an expenses claim form with a receipt to match every line item listed.

There are two basic rules. Firstly, if you don’t have the receipt, you don’t get the money and, secondly, all receipts must relate to your job.

This prevents the salesperson from claiming for driving from home to the office or presenting receipts for lunch on a Saturday for example.

Another feature is expense limits. Most companies put a limit on how much will be reimbursed for an evening meal or any overnight stay.

An individual may choose to pay €300 for an overnight stay, but the company may only pay the individual €120 in return. In Ireland, a person who regularly travels on business might expect to run up about€400-€500 in expenses each week, or up to €2,000 in an average busy month.

Accounts departments carefully check each claim and cross-check it against the claimants known movements in that month, preventing a claim for an evening meal in Dublin when the individual was at home. This is standard practice in the commercial world and applied rigidly. I once mislaid a month of receipts (just once), and did not get a penny.

So, it is startling to read that 17 TDs each claimed more than €5,000 a month in expenses without a single receipt between them. That’s more than €1 million in a year for the 17 likely lads with no proof attached. On top of that, we discover that another likely lad claimed travel expenses from Cork to Dublin while he was actually living in Dublin. The need to produce receipts would have nipped that one in the bud. In the real world, he would be joining the dole queue for trying to pull a stunt like that.

It suggests, though, that our 166 TDs are claiming between €3m and €4m a year in expenses, and that’s for just working 60 to 70 days out of 365.

So, I am offering my services to the Dáil. If appointed to manage TDs’ expenses I guarantee to save the taxpayer a couple of million a year.

I’m prepared to work for a percentage of the money saved, and I will have no need personally to claim for getting to and from work. And I’ll be creating employment – a win-win.

John Mallon

Shamrock Lawn

Mayfield

Cork