Calculating Business Mileage

aeronic

Hello, I work full time as a teacher and have been doing some extra tuition on the side. I have registered with HMRC and also notified the NI people that I will be earning under £4500 additional (so as not to pay extra contributions).

My question regarding business mileage is:

I often visit pupil's houses on the way home from work. Can I only claim the 'detoured' miles or the actual miles from leaving work in the evening.

eg, directly home from work is 12 miles, but a detour to a pupil may make the total distance 14 miles.

Thanks,
Steven.

Fonz_2

aeronic wrote: »

Hello, I work full time as a teacher and have been doing some extra tuition on the side. I have registered with HMRC and also notified the NI people that I will be earning under £4500 additional (so as not to pay extra contributions).

My question regarding business mileage is:

I often visit pupil's houses on the way home from work. Can I only claim the 'detoured' miles or the actual miles from leaving work in the evening.

eg, directly home from work is 12 miles, but a detour to a pupil may make the total distance 14 miles.

Thanks,
Steven.

My understanding is yes, you cannot claim mileage involved in your normal journey to and from work only the additional would qualify.

aeronic

Thanks.

However, I bet that my car insurer would want the whole of that journey covered under business mileage (I have it set to 1000miles per year).

Imagine this scenario: accident on way home from lesson, "what were you doing?", oh, that's during business mileage.

Food for thought.

daveyjp

No, the insurance for business limit is the miles you expect to do on business.

If you do a 14 mile trip and it's 2 miles more due to a business trip then only the 2 miles count towards your business mileage allocation - you are of course covered for business use 100% of the time.

Money_Grabber13579

According to my text book, if you don't have a normal place of work, or you are working somewhere other than your place of work for a period of time, then that is business miles. So I'd reckon, from home to pupils houses is business miles, but home to school isn't.

SeniorSam

I'm no tax expert but I believe you have a case to say that your work is split between employed (school teaching) and self emloyed (Tutoring).

Going to school to teach is not business miles, neither is going from school to home. But going from home to tutor a student and return is business miles since you will be returning to your home office where you prepare work.
I would also consider that if you were going from school to a student to tutor, then that trip is part of your business miles

I suggest you speak with an accountant or the tax office direct to get this cleared up.

Hope this helps

Sam

aeronic

Thanks for all the input. I'll phone the tax office myself.
I think/hope that's its just the additional miles that I may class as business.

edit: None of the pupil's I teach privately are pupils at my school. I would class that as a conflict of interest.

olly300

Just a note some car insurers don't give you a limit for business miles they are included in the total of miles you do.

So if you normally do 10,000 a year but then become self-employed and do another 2,000 business miles, as long as you are covered for the extra mileage and for business use they don't mind how the miles are allocated.

It gets really confusing when you do quotes as the first year I did this the car insurer didn't require a breakdown however subsequently some do want you to break it down which is a nuisance if your clients can change monthly.