16 January 2020 Julia Ascott, Employment Taxes Specialist
In January 2017 Cobia Ltd produced a useful guide for BUFDG members on the payment of subsistence expenses, specifically food and accommodation, to employees away on business. BUFDG have reviewed a greater number of expense policies and been given information from some of our members than we had access to in 2017; the number has increased from 29 in 2017 to 62 for December 2019. As a result, we are able to provide a far greater benchmarking analysis report of these types of expenses that you can read here.
We have also introduced a new median rate that looks at the middle figure(s), excluding the highest and lowest rates. This can be useful when the lower and higher rates are excessive which may skew the average and, in these cases, the median might provide a more reasonable reflection of ‘what’s typically used’ in HEIs.
In addition, we are also able to break down the data by region, which we hope will assist our members further when choosing the most appropriate rate for their HEI.
We hope that you find this update a useful guide to subsistence costs in HEIs. If you have any comments or suggestions for further benchmarking exercises, please contact Julia Ascott.