When I was a graduate student at Penn, they had us complete a
statement of business connection that allowed for travel expenses for
conferences to be reimbursed. You can see the form here:
http://www.finance.upenn.edu/forms/Penn-Student_Agreement.pdf. I am
not sure if it will solve your problem, but it might be worth looking
into.

Allan

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Martha Taylor <xxxxxx@auburn.edu> wrote:
> We have a grant to send a bunch of graduate students to a conference in
> south africa.  some are our students, some are students from other us
> universities and some are african or european university students.
>
> our payables folks are saying that we have to reimburse the students after
> they incur the travel costs (or provide a travel advance) and that the
> reimbursement/advance  is taxable.  we wanted to try to pay the expenses
> ourselves and skip the students. For example, enter into a contract with the
> hotel to pay the rooms etc and to buy the plane tickets on behalf of the
> students.
>
> payables is saying we can't do that.
> the pi is saying other universities CAN do that so what is wrong with us.
>
> before I go to the mattresses on this, I need info from other schools as to
> what the truth is about this issue.
>
> Thanks for bailing me out AGAIN.
>
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--
Allan Joseph Medwick
Telephone: 267.234.7972

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