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Gas pinch: Are you paid enough for driving on the job?

By SCOTT BARANCIK
Published September 18, 2005

The average caregiver at BayCare HomeCare drives her own car 50 miles a day to and from clients' homes. BayCare, a Largo company that assists the homebound, reimburses her 34 cents per mile.

That's far from the actual cost of driving a car in the Tampa Bay area, however.

According to business-travel consultant Runzheimer International, factors such as gasoline, maintenance, insurance and wear-and-tear add up to about 60 cents a mile locally for a 4-door, mid-size sedan. This means BayCare's more than 800 caregivers are shouldering 26 cents per mile - about $3,250 per year for a full-time worker - for the privilege of driving their own car on company business.

Workers everywhere are feeling the pain. With gas prices up 20 percent the past month and 60 percent the past year, employer reimbursements are falling farther behind actual costs than ever. It's an example of the burden-shifting taking place in the American workplace, where workers are already footing a growing share of health-insurance premiums, pension contributions and other business expenses.

Many area workers have no control over the odometer while on the job. Unlike personal travel, cutting back may not be an option.

"If (employers) get behind during normal times, then now they're really behind," said Lee Czarapata, director of client relations at Runzheimer. "But I would think a lot of drivers were bringing it to their employers' attention."

The Rochester, Wisc., company performs the calculations on which the federal government usually sets its reimbursement rate.

Deborah Garringer, chief executive of the Carter Belcourt & Atkinson accounting firm in Tampa and Lakeland, is sympathetic. With her staff pressing for an increase, she raised the firm's reimbursement rate this week to 48.5 cents per mile, mirroring the new rate for federal employees. She's advising commercial clients to do the same.

"That's a phone call that we've been getting quite a bit of in the last few weeks," she said. "What are other companies doing to keep pace with the rising cost of gasoline?"'

Locally, mileage reimbursement rates vary widely.

Insurer State Farm and benefits consultant Accordia recently increased their rate to 48.5 cents per mile. Sales staff at telecommunications company Verizon get 40.5 cents, while regional apartment managers at the Wilson Co. of Tampa receive 38 cents. Reporters and photographers at the St. Petersburg Times get 30 cents, the same rate federal employees received in 1995.

Rates also differ between government agencies. The state of Florida pays its workers 29 cents per mile driven, while the city of St. Petersburg pays 37 cents and Tampa pays 48.5 cents.

Brenda Storey, chief financial officer at Wilson, said the real estate company typically pays about 2 cents less than the federal government but hasn't decided whether to match its recent 8-cent increase, which went into effect Sept. 1.

"I'm sure we're going to do something, but I don't know exactly what," she said.

The Times has raised its reimbursement rate three times since CFO Jana Jones came on board in March 2004, including a 2-cent increase this month. Economic conditions are a consideration, as are the reimbursement rates other newspapers pay.

"We try to do something that's equitable for the employee as well as keep our costs in line," she said.

Susan Underwood, BayCare HomeCare's director of human resources, said the company pays more per mile than most of its competitors and is not going to be raising its reimbursement rate any time soon. Instead, she said the company is restricting each staff member to a narrower geographic area and having subcontractors handle patients who live in outlying areas.

"We're going to give them assignments closer to home. We don't want to send them all the way to Kalamazoo," she said.

Despite the recent spike in gas prices, fuel still accounts for a fraction of the cost of operating a car.

Czarapata, the Runzheimer executive, said depreciation - the loss in trade-in value due to use and the passage of time - accounts for about 43 percent of the bay area's 60-cent-per-mile cost. Fuel totaled 24 percent, insurance about 22 percent and maintenance and tires another nine percent.

It's an imperfect science. The true cost of driving is based on multiple variables and can differ wildly between drivers.

Czarapata's model, for example, assumes that the car is brand new; that it is driven 15,000 miles per year; that it gets a certain number of miles per gallon; that its owner is not paying interest on a car loan; and that the price of a gallon of regular, unleaded gas is $2.92, which was the Tampa Bay area average as of Wednesday. Tweak any of those assumptions and the estimated cost will change.

"If I'm driving a 10-year-old car 50,000 miles per year," he said, "30 cents (reimbursement) may not be bad."

For workers who receive less than 48.5 cents per mile from their employer, there may be a small measure of relief: the Internal Revenue Service allows individuals to deduct the difference from their taxable income. But that applies only to people who itemize their deductions and whose unreimbursed employee expenses exceed 2 percent of adjusted gross income.

The workers who can least afford to pay higher gas prices are the least likely to qualify for this tax break.

Scott Barancik can be reached at 727 893-8751 or barancik@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 16, 2005, 20:04:02]