Reimbursement

Ok if I go over the reimbursement amount for a required meal, is the overage considered an expense or loss?

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Consider it money well spent to eat something you enjoy rather than something less pricy that is Meh.

Today I went to Five Guys and spent $14.49. The maximum reimbursement is $14.20 The remaining $0.29 is an unreimbursed expense.

When I do my taxes, I list all expenses (reimbursed and not reimbursed) and then list all reimbursements. Some others on this Forum choose to only list the non-reimbursed expenses (for which there is no offset). Both end up with the same result.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

I choose to not deduct the extra expense at all, unless there is also a fee to deduct it from. For a reimbursed meal with no fee, if I go over, I eat the loss, and don't deduct it from income earned on other jobs. That's just my preference, and in reality any system will work in practice. The odds of getting audited and then the auditor looking at those few extra dollars are slim to none unless you really abuse the deduction on a large scale.

My rule of thumb is that if REQUIRED purchases exceed reimbursement, I claim them as unreimbursed expenses. If purchases are generic and I could have stayed within the reimbursement, I won't claim overages because it was my choice to purchase what I did.

@lindawinsey wrote:

Ok if I go over the reimbursement amount for a required meal, is the overage considered an expense or loss?

Money spent over the reimbursement amount could be reported as unreimbursed expenses.

For those of you who feel expenses over the reimbursement limit are deductible I wonder if you have a limit in mind. If you go to a fine dining dinner where the limit is say $120 but instead of ordering the chicken and pasta you order the high end steak and seafood and a nicer glass of wine would you still deduct the excess expense?. I can imagine going over by $100 or more to be pretty easy to do. Or are you only talking about fast food with smaller increments?

What is paid over the reimbursement level is, technically, only deductible if it was for items required by the shop guidelines. So, if the steak dinner was required but cost $10 more than the reimbursement, deduct that $10. But, if wine was not required, but you ordered wine, the cost of that is not deductible.

Based in MD, near DC
Shopping from the Carolinas to New York
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@walesmaven wrote:

What is paid over the reimbursement level is, technically, only deductible if it was for items required by the shop guidelines. So, if the steak dinner was required but cost $10 more than the reimbursement, deduct that $10. But, if wine was not required, but you ordered wine, the cost of that is not deductible.

But we must have wine with dinner, especially steak! A good Bordeaux or at least a red blend.

Besides, I really, really want wine too!

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