Under California law, employers are required to reimburse employees for all necessary business expenses incurred while doing their job. Failure to reimburse those expenses is a violation of California employment law, and your employer may be required to compensate you.

What Expenses Must Be Reimbursed?

It would be difficult to make a comprehensive list of all reimbursable expenses, because there are so many different types of work and expenses that those jobs might involve. However, some of the more common work-related expenses that must be reimbursed by California employers include those incurred for:

• Use of a personal vehicle
• Use of a personal cell phone
• Use of a personal device, such as a laptop, or tablet
• Meals, lodging, and incidentals during business-related travel
• Conference attendance
• Purchase and dry-cleaning of uniforms
• Purchase of hand tools required for work
• Internet service and equipment required for remote work
• Entertaining business associates
• Required training or education
• Postage

In general, if you had a reasonable expense as a direct consequence of fulfilling your work duties, or as a result of following your employer's directions, you should be reimbursed for it. However, some employers try to avoid reimbursing employees for reasonable and necessary business expenses. Many employees do not fully understand their rights, so powerful employers may get away with keeping money that rightfully belongs to their workers.

How Employers Avoid Reimbursing Employees

Most employers are well aware of the law that they must reimburse employees for business-related expenses. Despite this, some employers use a variety of measures to avoid paying employees back for expenses they incurred in doing their jobs. These tactics may include:

• Requiring employees to use a specific form to request reimbursement
• Requiring employees to request reimbursement within a specific time period
• Refusing to reimburse a reasonable and necessary expense that was not pre-approved by management
• Refusing to reimburse for use of personal devices or internet service because the employee didn’t incur additional expense to use them for work as well as personal purposes
• Requiring employees to take extra steps or provide additional records for reimbursement
• Reimbursing employees using installment payments
• Waiting weeks or months to reimburse and then paying less than the employee is owed
• Poor or inaccurate record-keeping regarding reimbursement
• Making slight underpayments in the hope that employees will not notice the discrepancy or think it is worth following up on

It’s not that employers cannot have policies and procedures for submitting expenses. But they cannot legally deny employees reimbursement for failing to follow those policies. In fact, if a California employer has reason to believe an employee has incurred a business-related expense, the employer has a duty to investigate and reimburse the employee for that expense.

Consequences for Employers Who Fail to Reimburse Expenses

Your employer may count on you not noticing a small underpayment, or may expect that you will not go to the trouble of pursuing a few extra dollars that you are owed. However, if your employer is failing to reimburse you, they may be doing the same thing to many other people, resulting in a big windfall for the employer.

Many employees who know that their employer is cheating them by not reimbursing expenses hesitate to take action even though they need and deserve the money. They may be afraid that the employer will retaliate against them for making a claim by firing them. That is also illegal.

One way to make employers follow the law and reimburse employees for their business expenses is to file a class action lawsuit. A successful lawsuit results in an award that is divided among the affected employees. The employer is also liable for the employees’ legal fees in bringing a lawsuit for expense reimbursement.

How the Graves Firm Helps Employees Entitled to Reimbursement

Unlike many attorneys who represent employees in these cases, the attorneys of the Graves Firm have experience working for the law firms that represent corporate employers. For example, attorney Allen Graves worked for Paul Hastings, a large national employer-side law firm. Having worked on the other side, we understand the tactics employers’ attorneys use and are prepared to counter them.

The Graves Firm has a strong track record of success: we have secured over $100 million dollars for California workers from their employers. We accept only those cases that we believe have a high probability of success and work hard to achieve the best possible outcome. Almost all lawsuits for failure to reimburse expenses settle before a trial. We will never encourage our clients to take a quick settlement if we believe we can get them a better one with a little more work.

These lawsuits aren’t just about money. They’re about fairness, and forcing powerful employers to do what’s right. If you believe your employer may be unfairly refusing to reimburse employee expenses, you don’t need to figure it out on your own. Talk to an experienced employment law attorney.

We invite you to learn more about our attorneys, our services, and our track record, and to contact The Graves Firm to schedule a consultation.