Dodgy expenses claims could add up to as much as £350m a year. Photograph: Graham Turner.
How honest are you when claiming business expenses? Do you always choose the more expensive option when you know the company is picking up the tab? Or are you a stickler for following the letter of the (company) law?
A review of MPs' expenses led by commons speaker, Michael Martin, is to be completed several months earlier than previously planned. But MPs aren't the only workers who occasionally interpret the rules on expenses to their advantage.
Research published this month by GlobalExpense has estimated that dodgy expenses claims in the UK could add up to £350m a year. Bogus mileage claims, haircuts, visits to a strip club and even a betting slip were just some of the fraudulent expenses that researchers uncovered.
Of course, not all out-of-policy expenses claims are phoney - it may be that an employee has overstepped the spending limit by £1 or failed to produce a valid receipt.
So is the onus on employers to tighten up their claim-checking? Or is it an area where we can too easily forget our ethics? Let us know what you think, and test your own ethics in our poll.
