BNSF News

BNSF Policy Revised to Focus on Timely Submission of Expense Reports

2008-12-04

Effective Jan. 1, 2009, BNSF will revise its Expense Reimbursement Policy to emphasize that expense reports must be submitted within 60 days of incurring an expense. The revised policy notes that if a request for reimbursement is not submitted within 60 days, the reimbursement generally becomes taxable income to the employee. This policy is consistent with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requirements.

Highlighted in boldface below is the revised section of the policy:

4.0.C. Employees should submit expenses within 60 days of incurring the expense (e.g., the date the expense was paid by the employee or posted to the BNSF Corporate Card). If an employee fails to do so, those expenses will generally be included in the employee’s income (and subject to taxation) on the next payroll period after the expense report has been approved and submitted for payment. Employees may submit requests for reimbursement of airline tickets, convention and conference fees, training seminars and hotel deposits before the events occur or up to 60 days after the event (see 5.1.G, 5.5.E and 5.12).

An automated system in Travel eX reminds employees to submit their expense reports for business expenses on their corporate credit card. Every 15 days, e-mail reminders are sent automatically to employees who have unsubmitted expenses greater than 30 days old. Daily reminders are sent with a copy to the supervisor starting 50 days after the expense.

In some cases, you may receive these warnings because you have pre-purchased airline tickets or paid other fees or deposits well in advance of an event. The BNSF Expense Reimbursement policy allows you to request reimbursement for these expenses before the event occurs. However, if this is not possible, these advance purchases will not be reported as income to the IRS, as long as you submit the expense report within 60 days after the event occurs.

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