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.
Dan DeMichele is the vice president of product management for LastPass. Dan has more than 20 years of experience leading both development and product management software teams for small startups and large corporations, bringing disruptive technologies to market and achieving commercial success. Prior to joining LastPass, Dan led product management at IBM, building out all consumable data and analytics services for Watson Cloud. He also held previous product leadership roles at Cloudant, IBM (Coremetrics), Unica, BEA, and Plumtree Software.
Megan Murdock is a Director in CBIZ’s National Learning & Development Practice.
John Starling is the senior vice president of Northern Bank’s 1031 Exchange and helps people and business entities preserve profit and build wealth faster through tax-deferred exchange.
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:
