Expense Mileage retracted

donkeykong_2

Hi,

Long story so apologies in advance.

My current employment requires travelling to client sites using my own personal car. My permanent work location is a head office for which I live quite a distance away.

Since I joined the company three years ago, I have always been required to travel to one client site in that time.

At the time of joining I was given a contract and a staff manual. The contract does not say anything about business mileage payments, but the staff manual does mention payments at the standard business mileage rates for travel away from your head office.

As the distance from my home to the client site is less than my distance to my head office, I have always claimed this journey as business mileage (at rates of 40p/25p), for which my company has had no problems doing so in the past and did indeed notify me of this procedure when I joined.

However, I have now been notified that I can no longer claim business mileage payments from my employer, as the distance I would have had to travel to my head office from home is greater than the distance I travel to the client site everyday from home. The explanation given is that as I chose to live a far distance from my head office, the employers can only be expected to pay my out of pocket expenses -ie, if my travel from home to the client site was greater than my travel to the head office. - I have been informed that this is as per current HMRC guidelines.

The excuse for the approval of my expenses from the employer for the past 3 years is that I was misinformed by previous management, and the issue has only been picked up now.

I have only chosen to live that distance from the head office because I was informed at start of employment that I could continue claiming expenses from there if the distance from home to client site was shorter than from my head office to client site. Since that relocation, I have been claiming expenses for a year with no issues.

I am not given a car allowance, however I am expected to have business insurance on my vehicle at my own expense.

I have the understanding that the client site that I travel too cannot be regarded as a permanent workplace, regardless of me being there more than 40% of my time and over two years, as my contract clearly states that my permanent workplace is my head office and I am expected to travel anywhere for work - the duration of my stay at the client site has never been finite, and indeed they could have (and could still do) move me to another location entirely at any time.

I have the following questions:

1) Are the expense guidelines outlined to me recently by my employer, purely a company policy or do they have some basis in the business mileage guidelines of the HMRC?

2) Are my employers within their rights to remove my expense payments from me, given that I have received them for 3 years and was told that I was allowed to claim when I joined (and they have been approved for 3 years)? Im thinking of something somebody has told me recently where if you have certain benefits that your employers have given you, that after a period of time it is like an extension of your contract (regardless of whether it is written), and its removal should be subject to compensation.

3) If I can no longer claim the expense payments directly from my employers, is my situation acceptable to claim tax relief myself directly from HMRC? How much will I get per mile?

Thanks in advance.

tyllwyd

My husband was in a similar situation (it was about 20 years ago) - he was working as a contractor (full time) in one town, his employer's office was based in a different town and we lived in a third town, which was about equal distance from both. He claimed mileage for travelling to the contractor's office for several years.

When his employer was investigated by the Inland Revenue, they were told that the company should not have been paying mileage to the contractors office because it was his 'normal place of work'. We didn't have to repay any money because it was his employer's mistake, but the employer had to pay penalties to the Inland Revenue.

So, I don't know the current rules, but based on my husband's experience I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Pee

I'd phone ACAS.

I think that the rules are you have to deduct at a certain rate the miles to your place of work.. certainly this seems to work with the Civil Service.

I think your inital agreement etc was wrong, but it doesn't seem very fair that you were told this was the case and made decisions based on that, such as where you live etc.

LinasPilibaitisisbatman

donkeykong wrote: »

Hi,

Long story so apologies in advance.

My current employment requires travelling to client sites using my own personal car. My permanent work location is a head office for which I live quite a distance away.

Since I joined the company three years ago, I have always been required to travel to one client site in that time.

At the time of joining I was given a contract and a staff manual. The contract does not say anything about business mileage payments, but the staff manual does mention payments at the standard business mileage rates for travel away from your head office.

As the distance from my home to the client site is less than my distance to my head office, I have always claimed this journey as business mileage (at rates of 40p/25p), for which my company has had no problems doing so in the past and did indeed notify me of this procedure when I joined.

However, I have now been notified that I can no longer claim business mileage payments from my employer, as the distance I would have had to travel to my head office from home is greater than the distance I travel to the client site everyday from home. The explanation given is that as I chose to live a far distance from my head office, the employers can only be expected to pay my out of pocket expenses -ie, if my travel from home to the client site was greater than my travel to the head office. - I have been informed that this is as per current HMRC guidelines.

The excuse for the approval of my expenses from the employer for the past 3 years is that I was misinformed by previous management, and the issue has only been picked up now.

I have only chosen to live that distance from the head office because I was informed at start of employment that I could continue claiming expenses from there if the distance from home to client site was shorter than from my head office to client site. Since that relocation, I have been claiming expenses for a year with no issues.

I am not given a car allowance, however I am expected to have business insurance on my vehicle at my own expense.

I have the understanding that the client site that I travel too cannot be regarded as a permanent workplace, regardless of me being there more than 40% of my time and over two years, as my contract clearly states that my permanent workplace is my head office and I am expected to travel anywhere for work - the duration of my stay at the client site has never been finite, and indeed they could have (and could still do) move me to another location entirely at any time.

I have the following questions:

1) Are the expense guidelines outlined to me recently by my employer, purely a company policy or do they have some basis in the business mileage guidelines of the HMRC?

Expenses are policy and at the discretion of the employer. If they dont pay any you can claim tax relief at 40p/25p but I doubt the tax man would allow you to claim relief in this case as the client site is shorter than your place of work so there are no expenses.

Expenses can be part of the contract but highly likely to be subject to change or discretion so no legal pursuit.

2) Are my employers within their rights to remove my expense payments from me, given that I have received them for 3 years and was told that I was allowed to claim when I joined (and they have been approved for 3 years)? Im thinking of something somebody has told me recently where if you have certain benefits that your employers have given you, that after a period of time it is like an extension of your contract (regardless of whether it is written), and its removal should be subject to compensation.

Its highly likely they are discretionary payments and the employer can change if they so wish. I think you are very lucky you got them this long and that there probably not legal expenses in tax terms and would suggest you are careful about getting HMRC involved.

3) If I can no longer claim the expense payments directly from my employers, is my situation acceptable to claim tax relief myself directly from HMRC? How much will I get per mile?

Thanks in advance.

You can claim tax relief but given the client site is closer than your place of work/ or you have been getting payments you are not entitled too for travelling to work every day getting HMRC involved is not the best thing.

Ultimately this is not travel - it is travel too and from work which you get no expenses for and you should count yourself lucky you got this tax free benefit you werent entitled too for so long, if HMRC get involved you may open a can of worms in respect of penalties and backdate tax.

Accept they have clamped out a bit of a scam and move on.