When gasoline prices are higher, are you likely to drive more or less? This isn’t a trick question -- unless your work for a company that reimburses you for your work-related driving mileage. In that case, logic goes out the front vent window. A recent study by NaturalInsight, a technology company engaged in workforce management, revealed what the company called “a startling correlation” between the over-reporting of worker mileage in expense reports with the rising cost of gasoline.
Using a statistically valid sample of data over a six-month period, the study found that when fuel prices increased, instances of over-reporting work-related mileage for expense reports increased. During the study period, when gas prices were at their peak, workers reported that they drove 32 percent more miles than they actually drove. Even during the period of lowest gas prices, they still over-reported by 18 percent. The report suggested that the “proportional correlation” during periods where gas costs ebb and flow leads one to believe that workers attempt to recoup increasing gasoline costs via over-reporting of mileage in expense reports. Most corporate reimbursement policies are set on a fixed cost per mile that doesn’t take into account fuel price fluctuations during the year.
So are a lot of workers taking advantage -- perhaps unethical advantage -- of their employers’ vehicle mileage compensation policy? It certainly seems so. On average, over-reporting of mileage ran at 24 percent throughout the study period. Our faith in human nature just took a big hit.
