Claiming tax relief on travel expenses

TTE83

For the past two years my employer has sponsored me to attend university. This involves a 60 mile round trip once a week, with my employer not giving me anything towards petrol costs.

Would I be able to claim tax relief on the petrol costs?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

HappyMJ

Did your employer pay you a days pay or for the hours whilst you were at the University? I would guess no so there is no travel expenses that can be claimed. If your employer paid you to go and paid you a wage whilst you were there then you can.

FatAndy

There loads of blurb here (actually way much) to sift through - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim32000.htm.

The key point is that the claimable expense must be "necessarily incurred" (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM31645.htm) and I suspect that wouldn't apply to your attending university. Basically you've already got the job so your university course probably isn't necessary for you to fulfil the duties of your employment and therefore any travel expenses would be considered private.


(p.s. I'm not sure what's happened between "necessarily" and "incurred" above, for some reason the two words don't want to sit next to each other!)