We decided to post the results of our 2017 survey of how hospices and home health agencies reimburse employees for mileage and on what basis.
How Do Hospices and Home Health Agencies Reimburse Employee Mileage?
In terms of who strictly uses the Federal IRS mileage rate (currently $0.535/mile), it was nearly an even split:
Use of IRS Rate vs. Alternative Basis
Interestingly, some who don’t use exactly the IRS rate still use it as their baseline, with more than 2/3 basing their mileage reimbursement on some percentage of the IRS rate and nearly 1/3 of companies using some other basis. These included internal benchmarks and external websites that publish local gas rates in an agency’s service area. Some unique examples even included paying a flat per paycheck mileage allowance instead of a rate based on typical miles driven, unless the mileage was unusually high. Other hybrids include some employees receiving mileage allowances while the employees in the top 10% of miles driven use leased company vehicles.
How Often to Update?
In terms of updating frequency, annually or even less frequently than annually were the norm. However, there was a tendency to overlap for the companies we surveyed that use something other than the IRS rate as their basis to update on a monthly basis. In other words, those who use local gas rates also tended to set them one month at a time. Of course, while this may keep the reimbursement timely in the event of sharp increases or decreases in gas prices, it certainly requires more administrative work in the payroll department.
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