Employees working from home during the coronavirus pandemic claimed some outlandish expenses this year, including pricey exercise bikes, facelifts and private jets.
Emburse, an expense management software company, released a compilation Wednesday of some of the craziest expenses it has seen claimed this year, some of which were actually approved. That included $1,895, which was approved as a contribution for an employee's Peloton Bike under the explanation of “for health and wellness.” On the other hand, a $7,600 expense claim for a facelift was submitted under the category of “repairs and maintenance” but was rejected, despite the pressing need to look one’s best during a Zoom meeting.
Ji Hun Kim is the CEO of Crypto Council for Innovation.
Brett Kelly is the founder and CEO of Kelly+Partners (ASX:KPG), a specialist accounting network serving more than 25,000 SME clients across 38 locations in Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, India and Ireland. He has 25 years of commercial and professional accountancy experience, of which he has spent the last 20 leading Kelly+Partners at a 30% average rate of revenue growth per year, and is the best-selling author of four books.
Erika Echaniz is a Product Manager at Foxit, where she focuses on agreement lifecycle and document workflow experiences that connect work across teams and systems. She holds a B.S. in Labor and Industrial Relations from Cornell University.
Some expenses weren’t for working from home, but more about getting out of the house safely. An expense claim for a private jet charter costing over $20,000 was submitted and approved under the explanation of “required to limit COVID exposure for international shoots.” Another travel-related expense claim was $2,500 for a helicopter ride, which was not approved.
The $79 expense claim for a dog crate could perhaps be used for travel at some point when that's safer, but in these times it was more plausibly to provide "crate training [for] a new COVID puppy to not run into Zoom meetings."
Below is an infographic produced by Emburse showing this and several other head-scratching claims:
