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.
Jerry Maginnis, CPA, is a retired KPMG partner who served as the managing partner of the firm's Philadelphia office. He currently sits on several public company boards and is the author of "Advice for a Successful Career in the Accounting Profession"
Jason Stverak is the chief advocacy officer of the Defense Credit Union Council.
Souvik Das is chief product and technology officer at Clearwater Analytics. He was most recently CTO at Zenefits, where he led all product development, operations, infrastructure, information security and information technology. He served as senior vice president of engineering at Grand Rounds prior to Zenefits and prior to that served as chief technology officer at Capital One Auto Finance, leading all of engineering for the multibillion-dollar business unit. At Capital One, he led the migration of COAF's on-prem infrastructure to public cloud, and the modernization of COAF's technical stack. Before that, he spent a decade at PayPal, where he held a number of increasingly responsible management positions in software engineering including leading the merchant technology team, a global team of several hundred engineers.
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:
