expense padding
Fraudulent cost inflation
Expense padding is the practice of inflating reimbursement claims beyond actual costs—adding fictitious charges, rounding up amounts, or claiming personal expenses as business ones.
An employee might pad expenses by listing a $40 lunch as $60 or billing for a cab never taken.
The audit revealed years of expense padding by senior executives.
The practice ranges from petty to fraudulent depending on scale and intent.
- fraudIntentional criminal trickery
- white collar crimeNonviolent financial wrongdoing
- receiptsTransaction documentation
- paper trailDocumentary evidence chain
- reimbursementPayment for incurred expenses
inflated · claims · cheating · invoices · embezzlement · kickback · overcharge · creative accounting · funny money · fudging · cooking the books · skimming · falsified · dishonest · corporate · business lunch · auditor · slush fund
expense paddingcost-cutting
Reducing expenditures deliberately
frugality · underspending · austerity · thriftiness · fiscal restraint
expense, expenses, expensive, expensively, inexpensive, inexpensively, expend, expended, expending