Picture this: Your boss sends you out of the office to attend an
afternoon meeting with a client at a coffee shop. You get back
to your car to drive back to work, and find a parking ticket on
your windshield. That’s a good $50 down the drain.  You messed
up.  But wait a second, if you hadn’t been sent to that meeting,
you wouldn’t have parked there. Shouldn’t your company pay for
the ticket? After all, your employer already reimburses you for
mileage and use of your car (55 cents a mile, federal max).
Plus, you expensed your coffee. Why not expense the ticket?
State law says an employer is required to reimburse an employee
for “all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the
employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her
duties, or his or her obedience to the directions of the
employer, even though unlawful, unless the employee, at the time
of obeying the directions, believed them to be unlawful.” That’s
according to Dan Eaton, an employment attorney with San Diego
law firm Seltzer Capla