And the quote from the corporate policy could be taken to mean the one way trip to the customer's site only, since it does not actually mention the rest of the commute home. And since CA law/rules are very clear that they do not include commutes, at best the employee has an ambiguous policy that the employer is not going to read the same way they are. In the absence of a more clearly worded policy, any judge or ALJ is likely to follow CA law/rules here.
Is this the hill the employee wants to die on?
I disagree re: the policy. It seems pretty clear as to the intent of the policy is that the company will reimburse as the OP thinks they should.
There is a difference between the company policy and the CA law on the issue. The policy pays more than the state requires.
@Fenris , is your boss, that you are concerned about, the final word at your company on this? As in are they the owner?
I'd be surprised in this case if the corporate policy stated that it would pay anything more than California law says it must pay given how extensive the California law is on this. In any event, the corporate policy may not be worth much. But the company must at least do what state law requires.
The OP wrote this...
That could easily be more than CA law requires.This is directly from the policy:"If the employee travels directly to a
customer’s place of business or to a seminar for the entire business day,
the full amount of the mileage traveled qualifies as business mileage and
may be claimed for reimbursement."
If he were in any state but CA or MA he'd be flat out of luck if his employer refused to pay mileage at all.
Agreed if we are talking state law/regulations/rules. However small claims court sometimes will enforce company policy in all states. In fact small claims court sometimes just pull the rules out of the air (or some body part). When I was at a fraternity, we had a cook who wanted a raise, and then start serving uncooked and seriously unprepared food when he did not get it. We fired him. Perfectly legal firing. We had paid his normal rate for all hours worked, even though he did not really work all those hours. We just wanted him gone. He was not that good a cook when he was not taking a job action. He wanted a big severance payment, took us to small claims court and got it, even though there is nothing in CA or federal law to support this action. Small claim courts sometimes look a lot like Wheel of Fortune. I would not assume that all small claims courts are pro-employee however. More like a random outcome generator.