Throughout my military career I’ve heard people both within and without the military mention that Soldiers should be exempt from paying income taxes. I’ve said it myself in the past. However, I’ve changed my mind.
For the past few years, I’ve been defense travel authority. As part of my duties, I ensure that military travel is paid for, legal, and ethical. I validate vouchers for travel reimbursement of official charges during temporary duty for training, conferences, or whatever other reason is needed for the travel. What I’ve noticed is that we, as Soldiers, take a lot for granted as it related to spending taxpayer money.
Military travel is governed by the Joint Forces Travel Regulation (JFTR). Every traveler is supposed to be familiar with it, but few are. It dictates what we can and cannot claim as an official expense. It dictates what kind of rental vehicles we’re authorized, how much we can spend on hotels, and what can be charged to the government travel card, which every Soldier is required to use for official travel.
In the 1990′s, the federal government made it mandatory to use government travel cards to pay for all official business expenses. This ended a longtime policy of advancing Soldiers money that was estimated that the trip would cost. The problem with this system is that often, troops would be advanced too much money and it was a pain getting that money back. Frequently, Soldiers would end up with debts due on their Leave and Earnings Statements. Since then, troops merely pay for all travel expenses with the government travel card and get reimbursed upon filing a voucher after the trip. It is the traveler’s responsibility to pay off the travel card at the end of the trip. So, if they don’t file a voucher to get reimbursed, they must pay the card out of their own pocket.
Because many people are not familiar with the JFTR, they tend to assume they are entitled to money they are not. They use the charge card for expenses that are not reimbursable. A good example of this is pre-paid fuel on rental cars. When dealing with government money, every expense must be justified and itemized. The tax-payers have the right to know what all their hard-earned tax money is being spent on. When the pre-pay fuel option is chosen, the rental car looks at the fuel guage to estimate how much fuel is needed to fill it up. For example, if they know that a car has a 12 gallon tank and the car is returned with the fuel gauge indicating a half tank, the company charges the traveler for six gallons. The problem with this is that it may only take five gallons to fill up the car in reality. How many times has your fuel gauge indicated empty but still had 2-3 more gallons left in it? If you return a car on empty, the company will charge you for 12 gallons. Since this is an ESTIMATE, the taxpayer could very easily be getting ripped off. Therefore, pre-pay fuel is discouraged and outright banned in most units (like mine).
Another common misconception about military travel is the laundry reimbursement. The JFTR authorized “up to $2 per day” for laundry expenses starting on the seventh day of travel. Most Soldier think they are ENTITLED to $2 per day just by virtue of being gone that long. I’ve seen it over and over again. A Soldier is gone for 20 days and requests reimbursement for $40 in laundry expenses. Receipts are not required to be presented with a voucher unless the expense is $75 or more. Receipts are also mandatory for airfare, hotel costs, and rental cars regardless of the cost.
The problem is that most Soldiers don’t really spend $2 per day on laundry, but they claim it. The mentality is that they are allowed $2 per day for laundry, regardless of whether they spent it. I’ve been TDY a lot in my career for trips that were as short as a day and as long as 6 months. I’ve NEVER in my entire career needed to spend the full $2 per day on laundry, even when I was using dry cleaning services because my mission required a suit or dress uniform. NEVER. And it’s not like I just don’t wash my clothes. Most military training locations provide free laundry services. Even if I had to pay for coin laundry, I didn’t have to wash more than three loads of laundry per week – PT clothes, uniform, and after duty hours civilian clothing. Provided that each load costs me about $3 to wash and dry, we’re talking $9 per week, even though I’m authorized up to $14. That first week, I may have also bought soap, which puts me up to $12 or $13. That expense would not be found in the following weeks.
If troops weren’t required to pay taxes, we wouldn’t have a personal stake in ensuring that every dollar we spend is spent wisely. As stewards of public funds, it is incumbent upon us to safeguard every dollar we’re authorized to spend. We must ensure that it is spent wisely, judiciously, and in a thrifty manner.
When I first got to my last unit, I estimated that we were spending about $8000 on ATM withdrawal and service fees every year. Soldiers are entitled to getting reimbursed for fees charged to withdraw money from their government travel card to pay for tips, tolls, or whatever. However, Soldiers were taking out multiple withdrawals each week. $20 here. $40 there. And each time, the fees averaged about $5. I put a stop to this and mandated that Soldiers were only authorized ONE ATM withdrawal per week. This dramatically cut our expenses and saved thousands of tax dollars. I have done the same thing in my current unit, as well as require receipts for all laundry expenses. Amazingly, the number of laundry claims has dropped.
In today’s massive budget deficit environment, the military MUST lead the way in refraining from abusing the public trust. We are responsible for ensuring that our national security is safeguarded. If this country goes bankrupt, our national security is affected. Therefore, proper stewardship of reimbursement and travel expenses is one way – besides shooting the bad guys – that we can protect this country! If we were exempt from paying taxes that we ultimately spend, we would have no real incentive to conserve, other than ideology – which many people lack these days. TDY is instead treated as a welfare program where we try to make as much money as possible.
