Career Path > Money Matters
Per Diem Docking?
RDTroja:
It would be excruciatingly painful and quite expensive to try to recoup ANY money an employer tried to take away from you in absence of a written contract. Beer Court is 100% right on this... the things stopping this from happening more often are 1) the employers integrity and 2) docking for no reason on a regular basis would quickly get around and the employee pool would get very shallow.
If you take unscheduled time off of any sort, expect to lose your perdiem. If you don't, you can consider it a bonus and remember to do that employer a favor in return.
PSYCHO:
Ok people lets get real. You have mentioned contracts, laws, in your replies. When is the first or last time any of you guys signed a contract for any nuclear site short term outages? In my case I have not in my 20 plus years. Docking is a personal, not professional, or company standard procedure. Favorites, buddies, and candy suppliers get there’s with no questions asked. Most others do not receive an equal shake.
Example; Tech. A calls off for two days during an outage
BUDDY: gets payes per diem.
TECH. B calls off for two days during an outage
NOT A buddy/partier not paid per diem.
This is the real deal! Just ask the old roadies from B.V., Peach, Calvert, Limerick, and so on....... This is not a law not a contract!
PWHoppe:
Psycho, good points... I too have seen it work that way, not saying it is right, but I would suggest when that does happen take it up with the home office since the problem is obviously with the site coordinator.
BTW..do not post with all caps..it is the cyber version of yelling at someone, and I know you didn't mean to yell at us.. ;)
newdeconner:
They can dock you , BUT you can write it off as unreembursed buisness expense on your taxes and any amount under payed per CONUS rates so itemize and be happy. ;)
Already Gone:
Before you start giving tax advice, learn the tax law. You, like most nuke workers, are suffering under a huge misconception about per diem.
Here is what you CAN do.
1. Add up all the ACTUAL expenses that you paid and have records for over the entire tax year.
2. Subtract the perdiem and other reimbursements you got for the entire tax year.
3. Deduct the difference if it is a positive number. (if it is a negative number, tear up the form and forget about it)
You CAN NOT deduct the difference between your actual per diem and the CONUS rate. The law is not complicated on this. You can not deduct what you do not spend. The actual perdiem (not the CONUS rate) is presumed to be the amount you actually spent unless you have receipts to prove that you spent more. BUT, if the actual rate is greater than the CONUS rate, you have to have receipts for everything - no matter how much you spent.
Since most roadies get more in per diem each year than we spend, none of us should be deducting travel expenses. Anyone who does is either living high and keeping very good records of it - or lying on their tax returns.
It would blow your mind to know how many travelling nuke workers have problems with the IRS. It should therefore be no surprise to anyone that most of them got turned in by other nuke workers with tax problems. THe IRS encourages this snitching by monetarily rewarding the snitch. If you owe them thousands, you tend to sell out your coworkers.
Therefore, I highly recommend to my nuke colleagues that you all pay your taxes and avoid the scams that can get you into deep doo doo when one of your "friends" has been caught and sells you out. The old deducting the "unpaid" per diem is as old a scam as they get, and the IRS is onto it.
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