As it is ruled in the Section 153 (1) of the Act XXII of 1992. on the Labour Code, the employers shall reimburse employees for all necessary and substantiated costs incurred in the course of fulfilling their work-related obligations, as well as for all other required expenses incurred in the employer’s interests, if the employer has approves in advance.
The employers were bound to reimburse the employees expenses connected to transportation by the decree 78/1993 (V. 12.). From 1 May it was replaced by the decree 39/2010 (II.26) which contains several new units.
The employer is obliged to reimburse the expenses connected to transportation for whom?
The employer is obliged to reimburse the expenses connected to transportation for those employees, whose abiding-place and the place of work are not in the same locality. By the decree the employer only obliged to compensate the costs of transportation between the home and workplace.
In pursuance of the decree, reimburse refers to the daily and the week-end travelling from the administrative or the country border.
Daily commutation and week-end home travelling
The daily commutation means, that the employee is travelling between the abiding-place and the place of work on a daily basis, or regularly depending on the duty-list. The employee is entitled to get reimburse in cases of the daily or regularly (depending on the duty-list) travelling from the administrative or the country border to the work-place which is defined in the labour contract. In this case, it is not relevant if it is a permanent or temporary residence of the employee, because it is a long distance travel.
In pursuance of the decree, we can talk about week-end home travelling in cases when the employee, for the easier approach chooses a nearer temporary residence, and from here travels home to the permanent residence once a week. In cases when the employee chosen temporary residence is outside of the administrative border of the town where the work-place is, the employee can get the reimbursement not only for week-end home travelling but for daily commutation as well.
As it is defined in the decree, the reimbursement, which is only a part of the whole cost, means a kind of cost sharing between employee and employer. In pursuance of the decree, if the employee can present a pass or a ticket - for railway (for second class), auto bus, suburban railway, scheduled ship, ferryboat - the employer pays back the 86% of the charge.
Permanent and temporary residence in connection with the reimbursement of transportation related expenses
Explaining the definition of permanent and temporary residence we should origin from the Act LXVI of 1992 on the record of personal data and addresses. According to the Section 5 (2) citizens permanent residence is, where the person lives, temporary residence is that address where he/she abodes for more than 3 month without planning to move from the permanent residence.
Employees being declared
An important change in the rules, that the employee has to make statement to get the reimbursement about the permanent and temporary address, and that he/she is commutating from which residence.
Amount of the reimbursement has to be paid
In this case, it is needed to distinguish the costs of daily commutation and week-end home travelling. For daily and week-end travelling the employer has to compensate at least 86% of the costs of the pass or tickets. The amount of the reimbursement for week-end home travelling is maximum HUF 30.000.
Attila Máriás