Switching from self employed to PAYE... claiming back tax?

Dudeface

Hello. I have been self employed for several years now as a salesman. I travel all over yorkshire (which is a big, big county) and constantly paying out for fuel costs and food. Now before, I could claim all this back at the end of the year on my tax return but now I have switched to PAYE and I am still doing the same thing. I feel I have now taken a massive reduction in pay becuase now, I have to pay all the costs to get to work out of my own pocket as my company does not pay any expenses or help towards any costs. It is getting a bit too much and I was wondering if the company I work for have to pay anything towards it or if I can still claim some back seeing as I'm spending about £500 a month towards just getting to work. It's getting a bit of a joke to be fair and figured this would be the best place to start asking.

John_Pierpoint

This sounds dodgy to me.
Food you have to eat to stay alive, don't expect much sympathy when trying to claim your lunch.
Either you are a servant employed by a master - in which case the master should provide you with what it takes to do your job.
As a craftsman you might be expected to provide the tools of your trade. But expecting you to buy your own car AND provide for all its running costs WITHOUT ANY RECOMPENSE seems right out of order to me. Do you have the right to turn down any business as uneconomic TO YOU because you are paying all the expenses? (You do have the right to claim back the 20p tax in the pound (or 40 or 50p if you are making a small fortune) that you are forced to to spend wholly & necessarily to do your job).
Now if you are a self employed specialist, then you sign your own contract and should be working for more than one customer. The upside of being able to work for less than the minimum wage is that you can claim more in expenses, as these are reducing your profits. If you place of business is normally your spare bedroom, you are charging costs against your profits as soon as you get up in the morning to get on with your business.
Unfortunately when you get involved in a triangular relationship Master/Customer - you - HMRC the motivations of all three parties are different and the scope for interpretation of the rules rises exponentially.

fengirl_2

As an employee, you cannot claim tax relief for the cost of getting to and from work (neither can you as a self employed person). However, travel between cutomers is an allowable expense for which you can claim 40p pm for the first 10,000 miles and 25p pm thereafter. You need to keep records of such journeys to enable you to make the claim st the end of the year.
If your contract states you are home based, then travel to and from all customers is allowable and you can also claim £3 pw for the maintenance of a room at home as an office.
And yes, we all have to eat and this is paid for out of taxed income.
As DJ says, if you have been including these costs in your self employed accounts, you have been lucky not to have been investigated.