This school year has not only brought in new freshmen and more construction, but changed the way Loyola’s reimburses its community.
According to assistant controller for the Financial Affairs Department Jayme Naquin, the previous policy allowed faculty, staff and students who traveled to conduct university business to submit a reimbursement request more than ninety days after an expense was paid for. However, if someone were to submit a request sixty days after paying for the expense, the reimbursement request would become a taxable income.
Naquin states that the major change that was made to the policy is that the university will no longer accept any requests after 90 days.
This change and policy will affect faculty as well as students. Assistant vice president for Student Affairs Robert Reed believes that the students who will be affected most will be the Resident Assistants.
“The RAs who are responsible for programming their floor may go out and possibly purchase food or some supplies that they may be using for a particular program and
may need to be reimbursed,” said Reed.
Naquin further explained that the change in the policy was caused by the fact that the university was not meeting the IRS’s requirements for accountable plan regulations and, as a result, had to pay additional costs for the reimbursement requests that were not submitted in a reasonable amountoftime.
Special events manager Angela Turnbull feels that while this change is more limiting, she understands the importance of it.
“It is something everyone has to do,” Turnbull said. “While it doesn’t afford as much flexibility, we have to follow the IRS’s rules.”
While the new time limit is a bit more inconvenient to most of Loyola’s employees, the new policy may provide the faculty, staff and RA an incentive to Loyola to improve from past mistakes and become more financially organized.
“It is our hope that individuals will submit all requests within 60 days of the expense paid date so that neither the individual nor the university will incur additional costs,” said Naquin.
Burke Bischoff can be reached at [email protected]
