Letting Employees Use Your
Vehicles
Do your employees use company vehicles, or perhaps your personal vehicles,
while they are working for you? Are you considering having them do so? If so, or
if you think this may fit into your future business plans, here is a six-step
process that can help:
- Understand
your liability for having employees use your vehicles and do what you
can to reduce it.
- Understand
the tax consequences of having employees use your vehicles. You'll need
to keep appropriate records to substantiate business use, and report certain
information to the IRS when it is required.
- Obtain
vehicles for your employees to use, if you don't already have them.
- Obtain
adequate insurance for your business, your vehicles, your employees, and
yourself. More importantly, be sure you have sufficient coverage to protect
persons and property that could be harmed by an employee who has an accident
while driving one of your vehicles.
- Establish
policies on vehicle usage.
- Consider
reimbursing employees for using their own vehicles as an alternative. It
may be cheaper in both time and money. Please understand that you may be
held liable if an employee is involved in an accident while doing work for
you, regardless of who owns the vehicle he or she happens to be
driving. For this reason, you should thoroughly understand vehicular
liability and insurance — as explained in steps one and four — even if
your employees use their own vehicles.