Recently, a discussion about adjustments to the travel mileage reimbursement policy has drawn attention among employees. An employee found an old post from 2014 on the internal forum, but believed its details were insufficient to fully resolve current confusion. According to the employee, the company's policy for many years was: when employees travel to a temporary work location, they could choose to depart from their regular office or home, with the closer of the two distances used as the starting point for calculating reimbursable mileage. However, the company recently changed the policy, requiring that the normal commuting mileage (i.e., the distance from home to the regular office) be deducted from the mileage from home to the temporary location.

In the early stages of the policy change, most employees considered it reasonable and showed little resistance. However, the company later added a clarification: "The commuting method does not change the commuting mileage incurred from home to the office." This clarification raised issues because a large number of employees rely on public transportation for their commutes. The commuting costs these employees actually pay do not reflect the actual mileage between their residence and office. For example, some employees commute more than 20 miles daily, but the out-of-pocket commuting mileage (calculated based on actual driving distance) is often less than 3 miles.

To clarify the rules, the employee cited Revenue Ruling 99-7 issued by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) (see link:https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rr-99-7.pdf), which references provisions of Revenue Ruling 94-47. According to Rev. Rul. 94-47, taxpayers generally cannot deduct daily transportation costs between their residence and regular work location. However, taxpayers can deduct daily transportation costs from their residence to a temporary work location (located outside the metropolitan area where the taxpayer resides and normally works). Additionally, Rev. Rul. 94-47 clarified Rev. Rul. 90-23, stating that taxpayers must have at least one regular place of business "away from home" to deduct daily transportation costs from their residence to a temporary work location in the same trade or business, regardless of distance.

Based on the above rules, the employee raised two core questions: First, according to IRS rules, should reimbursement be based on the full mileage, or only on the out-of-pocket mileage incurred by the employee? Second, does the mode of transportation (such as public transit) used by the employee to reach the regular office affect the mileage calculation for the temporary location?

Currently, the company has not provided further clarification on these issues. Employees look forward to management clarifying the reimbursement calculation method in line with IRS guidance and considering the actual circumstances of public transit users to avoid unfairness in policy implementation.