Tax issues....maybe

Taxes are based upon how much income you make. A tax deduction is something you subtract from that income.

If your company is subtracting the chargeback from your gross income, your income is already being deducted.

You may want to reconfirm that this is how they're doing it. If so, you can't deduct it again.

However, you're still getting the deduction — it's coming off the top.

 

My whole premise is predicated on the way I interpreted the situation based on terminoligy.

i.e. ..... if your gross pay is $1000.00 and, this reflects on your pay stub, then the company deducts $100.00 for over idle expenses (reflected again on your pay stub) and re-adjusts your goss income to $900.00 then, takes appropriate deductions based on the $900.00, what they have done is pay you money then deduct it as an expense before taxing it and, take taxes from the remaininder.

Which, from everything that I've been taught is the only way that you can deduct from someones pay, either pre or post tax. To "deduct" you first have to pay.

Now reducing or docking pay is an entirely different matter.

i.e. If (as an example) company policy is to reduce your pay by "X"% based on a threshold of idle percentage. Then they aren't "deducting" it from your pay. They are actually "recovering an expense" by adjusting your pay scale.

IMO if the first instance is true (you were paid the money on paper and it was deducted) then you would be able to claim it.

In the second instance where the pay was simply re-adjusted to diferent rate then, no you couldn't claim it because you really weren't paid that money at all. You were just penalized based on a certain set of criteria.


.......... Jim

 

Sounds to me like you got it!

 

One of the companies that did this in the past was Covenant. This was done as a payroll deduction from the gross wages which reduced the net pay. They did not do a restructure of the pay per mile.

If it was done pretax, then there is no deduction to claim because the income was reduced. After tax, there is a deduction.

 

I am not sure what you are meaning here. But as an owner operator everything is pretax so there is no difference.

 

Number one. You will still get the operating costs for the truck that was used either way. When you got the money back for the use of the truck, you could have recorded it two ways. One as income or the other as a expense reduction.

The total effect of this situation is a nill entry.

 

The fuel question is the same as the previous.

The employee would get to take the deduction as a employee like the per diem. However, I would not imagine the employee hanging around for long.


You have an active imagination. The employer never loses.