The headline number
A 2015 study commissioned by the enterprise software company Unit4 surveyed roughly 2,000 employees across nine countries. It found that about 17% of US employees regularly failed to claim all of the business expenses they were entitled to, at an average of roughly $390 per affected employee per year. Extrapolated across the US workforce, that produced an estimate of $9.7 billion in unclaimed expenses annually. Adding Canada brought the North American figure to about $10.7 billion.
Coverage of the study is available from CNBC, HR Dive, and Unit4, which commissioned the research.
What the number actually measures
This is the part most articles get wrong. The $9.7 billion is not a receipts-only figure. Respondents gave several reasons for not claiming:
- They lost the receipt.
- They never obtained a receipt in the first place.
- The expense felt too small to bother claiming.
- They simply forgot to submit the claim.
- The reimbursement process was too cumbersome to be worth the time.
So the defensible phrasing is: US workers leave an estimated $9.7 billion a year in reimbursable business expenses unclaimed, with lost and missing receipts among the reasons. Anything stronger — "$9.7 billion lost to missing receipts" — overstates what the survey supports.
How old is the data?
The fieldwork dates to 2015. No comparable follow-up study has replaced it, which is why the figure still circulates a decade later. Treat it as a study estimate rather than a measured current-year total. Prices, travel volumes, and expense tooling have all changed since; the direction of the finding is more durable than the dollar amount.
Related figures worth knowing
- Out-of-pocket spending is large. Employees front significant sums on personal cards before reimbursement — the Conferma Insight Report has put annual US employee out-of-pocket business spend in the tens of billions.
- Processing an expense report is not free. The Global Business Travel Association has estimated it costs roughly $58 and 20 minutes to process a single expense report, and materially more to correct one containing errors — which is why finance teams push back on incomplete documentation.
- The IRS does not require a receipt for everything. Under IRS Publication 463, documentary evidence generally is not required for expenses under $75 (lodging excepted) — but you still must substantiate the amount, date, place, and business purpose. See our IRS receipt requirements guide.
Why any of this matters to you
If you are the 17%, the personal number is what counts: a few hundred dollars a year that you earned and did not collect, usually because assembling the paperwork was more annoying than the claim was worth. That is a fixable friction problem. A redacted card or bank statement showing the merchant, date, and amount is normally enough to satisfy a reviewer when the original receipt is gone.
Sources
- CNBC — Workers fail to claim billions in expenses (2015)
- HR Dive — Employees leave $9.7B in unclaimed expenses on the table
- Unit4 — study sponsor
- GBTA — expense report processing cost research
- IRS Publication 463 — Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
Figures above are third-party estimates, not measurements of the current year. Verify before citing them in formal work.