The IRS just gave Ball State University an excuse to limit the use of university-owned cell phones and PDAs.
According to the Internal Revenue Service's Taxable Fringe Benefit Guide, cell phones and PDAs are now "listed items," which means the university can't claim them for tax purposes. The new IRS rule simply states employees must monitor the calls they make. The company will pay for business calls and not for personal calls.
But the university went too far with the plan. It's important to be efficient, it's another thing to muddle the system with rules about cell phone use.
The university cut back phones to save money while the IRS found a way to raise more money. The cuts might save cash, but it's not worth it for all the trouble it will cause the employees. If the university was trying to cut corners and save money, maybe cell phones weren't the thing to cut.
Employees given university phones must document the calls they make and can only make 10 minutes-worth of personal calls without having a "follow-up action" taken against them by their department head.
Professors will probably still need them to do work with other professors and students, but now they will have to use their personal cell phones.
Employees who use their personal cell phones and PDAs for business must log all the calls made and show receipts to get an "allowance" to pay for the business calls. The allowance will be added to their income and represents taxable income to the IRS.
A department can give an employee the allowance only if calls cannot be made with "a landline phone, pager, two-way radio, or other communication device," according to the policy.
We live in the 21st century, why should university employees be without a cell phone. In order for employees to have their own cell phone, they must pass a credit check to switch to a new provider. Poor credit history might leave some with no way to communicate.
Unless they buy an old phone from the university. Ball State can get rid of older phones and profit off the sale at the same time, all while the employees essentially get taxed for their business calls.
Also, the university brags about being one of the top wireless colleges in the country, but employees are stuck using landline phones. Does this make sense?
The department heads will review all of the bills for the university phones and must force employees to follow the university's new rules.
But don't they have enough work on their hands?
This also rings back to the smoking ban. Here again, department heads have to do something with little importance to save some change for the university.
At the end of the day, Ball State University just created more bureaucracy for itself.
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