Nonrev Fee, UAX payroll deduction

I am no longer working for the airlines,but was lucky enough to have a friend of mine me as a registered guest. I used the travel privileges quite a bit. Domestic travel was free and for international travel i only paid taxes,which i paid by credit card before each trip. I did this for about six months, without incident. Then, about a month ago,my friend was payroll deducted $900 for my travels that whole period of time,and notified that they were charging $20 per leg domestic,and $50 internationally. They did this retroactively,and apparently only for her second registered guest (me). This was apparently the first that they had informed her about this surcharge. My question is, can they take that money out of you're paycheck for something they never told you you would be charged for?

Two things. One. He will never see that 900 bucks ever again. Two....you are no longer a "registered guest". He may have lost his money and now a friend (you) because it sounds like he just used poor judgement.

You need to talk with your friend. You do not fly free. Travel companions fly and the friend pays TAXES ONLY on imputed income on that flight. There is a calculator on Uniteds site to check prices (not very good). So, if your friend had $1000 of imputed income, he gets $1000 added to his check, it gets taxed and then the $1000 gets taken off his check. So he needs to know what all the taxes are on his check. for me the taxes on imputed income is up in the high 30% range so I charge my friend 40% of the imputed taxes so looking at the above $1000 it really costs only $400. Your friend needs to keep up with how this all works.
Also, United is VERY slow on charging me (I am also UAX carrier), not sure how they are at charging their own employees.

I don't know what my overall charges were flying this last trip. I believe I had a few fees. It used to be free for us using Continental if you had more than 10 years with them, regardless of where you went. It seems like whenever I listed on various legs, I would be charged a certain fee. I don't quite understand it but I bet you I probably paid around 40 bucks in fees all together. Maybe more.

The imputed income (taxes withheld) has always been there. It is NOT a UA-only thing, it's a taxable benefit as seen by the IRS. UA does not get that money, the government does. That said, the amount of imputed income does seem to depend on the airline, but I have no idea how that works. Either way, that's something that your friend (the employee) did not research enough and honestly should have known about.

As for the fares being charged, I'll admit that's a bit fishy to do retroactively. I really don't know the details of that, but that's something between you, your friend, and the employee travel center. There really isn't anything that we can do out here. I would just recommend that he call the ETC if possible, not email, as they can be really slow about that.