volunteering - can you claim for travel expenses to and from place?

makes_no_sense_to_me

My husband has been a volunteer with the army cadets as a sergeant and has a full time job. He pays tax at 40% and gets paid for his volunteer work if he works full days outside the regular 2 evenings a week that he is volunteering for. On his payslips they have been taking 20% and he has telephoned the tax office today and been told that he owes a further £450 for 2011-2012 period. I know that you can claim for washing your uniform as I have just checked that out but can he also claim for travelling the 16 miles a week to and from the detachment plus travel on these extra days that he is paid when he has to travel for many miles to collect a minibus and then travel home again after dropping it off. I have read you cannot normally claim for travel to and from the workplace and he doesn't claim for his normal job but this is a volunteer position and the miles soon add up. Can we claim? I've calculated that if he could claim he would be able to claim back a good £250 which would sure help cut down that tax bill he owes. Please help - we don't know if it's worth completing the self assessment to try and claim the travel costs or just let them take the money out of his pay by changing his tax code.

marybelle01

I don't see how. Other volunteers can't claim tax relief on their mileage (although it is generally reimbursed in some way if they are genuinely volunteering and not getting paid), but on the days he gets paid, then, well he's getting paid so it isn't any different from when you go to work.

MikeAUK

I start police specials in oct and I know I can claim for travel to my training and station. However if getting paid then I very much doubt it

moose1982

marybelle01 wrote: »

I don't see how. Other volunteers can't claim tax relief on their mileage (although it is generally reimbursed in some way if they are genuinely volunteering and not getting paid), but on the days he gets paid, then, well he's getting paid so it isn't any different from when you go to work.

I used to be able to claim the HMRC upto 45p per mile bit on my voluntary work when I was in full time employment (except it was 40p then). A simple form (P87?) will do the trick.

System

He can't claim for the evenings because he isn't being paid for those. You can only claim tax relief for anything if the work is paid. You must have an income for that work to be able to claim a relief.

makes_no_sense_to_me

Yes I can see how since he doesn't get paid for the 2 evenings a week - 52 weeks of the year, the 830 so miles he has clocked up in mileage cannot be claimed back from the tax office as he hasn't actually paid tax on that. I have asked him to look into claiming from the army cadets because although it's only 16 miles a week - over the year it does add up but he doesn't seem to think he can because weekly it's not "alot" - the paid days that he does he gets £56 a day and obviously pays 40% tax on that but the problem has arisen because they only pay 20% tax on his behalf so now he has to find the rest (although it can be paid by changing his tax code). The problem I have with it is that every penny he earns through these days he basically uses to buy himself more equipment for going on annual camp/weekend camps etc and because he thought he was already paying the tax (his fault for not checking his payslips properly) he now still owes 20% and every penny we get into the bank is already allocated for somewhere so to lose just a few pounds a month is a headache. This puts me in a very bad mood with him right now !! Makes me think that he shouldn't be volunteering at all because he wouldn't feel pressurised into doing the paid days if he wasn't volunteering in the first place! (and believe me when I say feels pressurised -(although again he was warned by other volunteer cadets when he first joined!) thank you for all the replies!!