Killjoys

[fivemack]

In England, if your employer wants you to attend a three-day conference, Monday to Wednesday, in Tblisi, the traditional way to proceed is to purchase with your employer's credit card a flight leaving Heathrow Friday evening and arriving Tblisi at an uncivilised hour Saturday morning and a flight leaving Tblisi Sunday lunchtime and arriving Heathrow at a reasonable hour Sunday evening, to take two days of vacation, and to use this to get yourself five days in Tblisi along with the conference; this means you arrive at the conference bouncy and efficient, having spent two days in the Georgian sunshine to cure your jet-lag, then get three days in the unsurpassed beauty of the Georgian mountains before returning home.

If you are Swedish, the government regards this as a benefit in kind for taxation purposes, and the forms you'd have to fill in to give the employers the tax they'd have to pay on it are sufficiently onerous that employers don't offer this option.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Taking some personal time on a trip is standard in the US, too. As you say, buncha killjoys.

The question is, do you figure you're getting away with something and the .se have it right? Or are the .se overly anal in this situation?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Airlines selling flights to Swedes should require that the traveller, not the person paying, specifies the dates that they fly.

[dave [earth.li] (from livejournal.com)]

Someone suggested to me that HMRC also regard this as a benefit in kind for taxation purposes if you stay past the date that your employer required you to be there, but on reading booklet 490 (www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/490.pdf) I can see no rule that would agree with him there. They certainly don't seem to catch people for this.

Though additional nights in the hotel are probably taxable, even if they extend the trip over a saturday night, and so pay for themselves in cheaper air-fares.