After the internet bubble has burst and employers have forced conversion of a company-issued cell phones into personal-with-subsequent-reimbursement, the State of California has passed a privacy-enhancement law to the effect that Employer may not request the entire bill for a personal cell phone, unless they have had no limits on the amount of money they will reimburse.
Thus, any company that has set clear designated monthly limits (like all have done) could no longer request the entire bill and was required to accept the front page only. Read it on MSN years ago but have not kept Code references.

I have been submitting just the cover for yeas with accounting grumbling on and off and have been reimbursed.
Now for the first time they have refused till the full bill shall be sent, per the ”new” 2008 policy: “…may provide reimbursement for mobile phones up to the limit designated by department managers. Limits are $50/$100/$150. Unless justification is provided to department managers, no employee may exceed the limit of $150 per month. The entire phone bill must be provided, not just the summary page. If the entire bill is not provided, ... reserves the right to not reimburse.”
Based on the "reserves the right" verbiage, accounting has again requested the full bill or they will not pay. I am on a 100 limit / $100 plan with the cell carrier.

Another pet peeve of mine is that since we do not have any rules on equipment purchase every replacement is an “undertaking”. They do not cover expenses when the bill is over my limit, but always try pay less when the bill is less than it. So, when I pay for the phone out of my pocket i.e. get a $300 bill in one month, $200 is “my problem”. Then, when I get the “zero” bill two months later (rebate applied to the bill), they try not to reimburse me $100 for that month: since I paid “nothing”, they pay nothing.

I am required to have a cell phone.

Can somebody point me to the proper statutes or give other advice other than “send the bill”. Yes, I have nothing to hide, and yes, I do not feel that they should see where I call from my phone.

They only need to reimburse you for actual business expenses. If you upgrade voluntarily or don't have a bill one month, they do not have to reimburse.

See here for the IRS issues related to cell phone reimbursement. http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu5tZR0BIzToBgF1XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyamlnMGd 1BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA0Y2NTVfOTM-/SIG=12lpklbik/EXP=1212258521/**http%3a//wireless.berkeley.edu/pdfs/Cell-Phone-Policy-Prop-Re-3.pdf

The CA labor code section is as follows. The so-called rule/law that employers are not allowed to see the employee's phone bills that they are supposed to reimburse is perhaps a made up law that does not actual exist. I would certainly be very skeptical of the existence of such a rule/law absence verifiable proof. I have handled payroll and accounts payroll for some pretty big companies based in CA and this is news to me, and even news to our workforce who have come up with some pretty strange "rules" of their own. It is pretty common for employees to magic-marker out personal calls on the copy, then copy again, leaving only the business calls that reimbursement is requesting for.

As ElleMD mentioned, there are proposed changes to the IRS rules. However until/unless these changes actually occur any reimbursement that fails the accountable plan rules are taxable income to the employee. And the current IRS rules do indeed require detail support for a non-taxable expense reimbursement to occur. There is nothing that CA can do to change this. CA rules (if any) effect CA only.

CLC 2802. (a) An employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of 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.
(b) All awards made by a court or by the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement for reimbursement of necessary expenditures under this section shall carry interest at the same rate as judgments in civil actions. Interest shall accrue from the date on which the employee incurred the necessary expenditure or loss.
(c) For purposes of this section, the term "necessary expenditures or losses" shall include all reasonable costs, including, but not limited to, attorney's fees incurred by the employee enforcing the rights granted by this section.

Based on the ElleMD links, here what has happened - Just like Berkeley we "...were required to convert their University account to a personal account with the same carrier. Employees who wish to change carriers may then port their number to another carrier, without penalty." etc. Levels were assigned and approved.
As such, they have converted us all to monthly allowances without officially calling it that way. What they have never done too, was to separate it as such on a paycheck – we were told to submit monthly cell phone bills along with other items on a regular expense report. Would be covered togegher with everything else submitted.
With company “evolvement” phone policy has morphed in one paragraph cited above in the 2008 Travel Policy. So, accountants keep asking for line-items even though the phones are long all-ours and entire bill contains Plan – x dollars on the first page and "call to yyy – zero charge" on the next 10. Therefore, there is no “split” between personal and business use. If you were approved for cell phone use – you get money at your “level” no matter the size of the bill, if you were not approved – get a phone card from Company Telecom Manager through your manager and do not use your cell. Since they have never called it as allowance, they keep trying not to pay at the monthly level if the bill is smaller than the level. At the same time, the have NEVER paid over the approved level unless high-level manager got specifically involved in the approval due to “unique circumstances”.
It is because of the fact that we get what amounts to "allowance" I believe we are not required to submit the entire bill and I recall reading about it on the MSN as one of the California "privacy"
peculiarities.

The company can pay you a lump sum rate but per the IRS must be able to back up that the amount is sufficient to cover the expenses and is correctly treated tax wise. There is no law that I can find that indicates the company may not see an itemized bill, but plenty that supports them doing so. Per FEDERAL law, if all the calls one month were personal and not work related, the allowance would not legally be able to be treated as tax exempt and must be treated as taxable income. The only way to know this is to get a listing of the calls that were made. http://www.jacksonlewis.com/legalupdates/article.cfm?aid=1232

That Berkeley reference of yours was a godsend. Since the “new IRS” interpretation of documentation requirements has become that EVERY business-related call must be documented on the bill or next to it or the entire phone bill is taxable employees’ income it looks like what my accounting have expected and what they have achieved are not the same :) .
The fact that they store /”audit” a bunch of paper thinking that they can now show the entire amounts as “business expense” might have worked years ago but does not work now and will not help them should IRS audit the company.
They seem to be oblivious to the new reality that since employees always were permitted to place personal calls (after all, the phones are in our names) and they have never counted usage rates / calculated splits / deducted appropriate portions between personal and business use (just like UC has not been doing it till they were audited in 2007) the Company is still on the hook for income tax penalty on the full amounts, like UC was – “listed property”rules @ http://www.irs.gov/govt/fslg/article/0,,id=167154,00.html .

Having said that, I understand that in accounting eyes they still think they follow “the business deductible expense” route and require the full bills even though, with no one separating anything on the bills submitted to accounting, they do not achieve their objective and are ripe for IRS lesson in humility. In the mean time, I am taught that lesson myself and will have to either send the entire bill, or forget about that $100 a month I am so used to :(
On the other hand, "taxable allowance" inded does not require full bill :D