When a trip to work is considered a business trip, and when is it just an official trip? The answer to the question is simple and clearly registered in the legislation. We understand together.

Distinctive features of a business trip

A business trip is a trip of an employee by order of the employer for a certain period to fulfill the official order outside the place of permanent work. Such a definition is given in Article 166 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. The Government Decree of October 13, 2008 N 749 specifies that the trip on an official order to a representative office or a branch of a company in which the employee does not constantly work, is also considered a business trip.

Here are three important points that determine the business trip:

• Service assignment. An employee going on a business trip should be set a clear working task.
• A certain period. We examined the moment about the timing of the business trip in a separate article. So far, we note that in modern Russian legislation, clear terms of business trips are not prescribed. In practice, the minimum period is 24 hours. The employer sets the maximum term independently.
• A trip to a place that is not a place of permanent work. According to the law, even a trip to the office located in another area of ​​the city can be framed as a business trip.

Let’s look at two similar situations.

Situation #1. The company sends a manager from Moscow to an office in St. Petersburg for a week to hold a campaign for buyers. During this week, he organizes all the conditions, holds a competition, summarizes its results and returns to Moscow. By law, this trip is a business trip.

Situation #2. The company manager for three summer months moves to live in Sochi and agrees with the leadership that he will work from the local office. He comes to work at the same hours as in Moscow, and fulfills his main work duties. According to the law, this is not a business trip. The tax authority will assume that the employee temporarily changed the workplace to another branch, and it is impossible to calculate the payment of his work as business trips.

Who can go on official trips

The service is the trip of employees whose constant work takes place on the way or has a traveling character. These are, for example, couriers, forwarders, train conductors, drivers. Service trips should not be paid as business trips. Service trips are mentioned in the Government Decree of October 13, 2008 N 749.

Each employer determines the list of professions and posts of traveling workers yourself, so you can include any specialties in it. The main thing is that, by the nature of his activity, the employee should be moved in the area, and the condition on the traveling nature of the work was enshrined in the employment contract.

For example, if you send a full-time courier from Moscow to an office in St. Petersburg to transfer important documents, he does not go on a business trip, but performs his labor duties assigned to the contract. If the manager is lucky from Moscow to St. Petersburg, then such a trip needs to be issued as a business trip. By the way, if an employee is traveling in his car, read our article “A Personal Car Command”.