Legal Question in Employment Law in Tennessee
Travel Time/Home office
2 issues that are related.
I work in a field service job and the employees are required to have home offices but receive no compensation for the space used in the home.
Also, we travel to various locations to do service up to 1.5 hrs away but are required to consider the time to our first location and from our last location as ''hours not worked'' since we are traveling home.
The question is this - since our offices are in our homes, can these trips be considered to/from home(noncompensable), or should we be getting paid for the time and/or the company use of our home?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Travel Time/Home office
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that travel from home to the office is commuting and cannot be considered business travel. However, in your case the office is the same location as the home. An employer is not required to compensate you for travel and use of your car for company travel. Most do to remain competitive with other employers. If the employer did choose to compensate you, that would be considered reimbursement of a business expense and would not be declared as taxable income on information returns filed with the IRS. There is practically no precedent for an employer paying an employee for the business use of his home. Bottom line: whether an employer should compensate is a moral question. Whether the employer must compensate is a legal question, and the answer to both of them is NO.
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