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.
Tom Brehmer is a co-founder and CEO of Trisk.io Inc., a no-code automation platform spun out of VPTax Inc., a Silicon Valley corporate tax firm he founded in 1991, where he specialized in multistate and multinational technology companies. Prior to VPTax, he was a tax partner at KPMG. A graduate of the University of Iowa, he has been an evangelist of automation as a means of achieving superior client service and improved work-life balance. In addition to being published in technical tax publications, he was featured in Upside magazine for his innovative business model.
Diana Li is a spring reporting associate for Financial Planning. She's a master's candidate at New York University and has experience in Beijing bureaus of The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The Financial Times and Xinhua News.
She's on Twitter @diana_k16.
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:
