Full time employee travel expenses

thomohawk

Hi All,

I have a question regarding my employment & whether I am entitled to travel expenses or not. I work in TV but I am a full time employee for a specific company. I am required to work at many different locations throughout the year. The office is based in Hertfordshire but I will be living in Glasgow. I am required to work a certain amount of days each year & almost half of these days will be made up from work in Scotland, hence my decision to live in Glasgow, with the remainder in England.

Some of the jobs will be close to the office in Hertfordshire & I have been told that on the occasions where I will be working close to the office I will not be entitled to any travel expenses incurred as I will be working close to the office & it is my choice to live in Glasgow. As most staff live close to the office I will only be reimbursed for travel expenses if it is a location where other employees would normally need to travel to & subsequently stay in a hotel, ie Manchester, Birmingham etc.

However, although this may be regarded as the permanent place of work I only work from this location around 10 days a year. Normally, if there is a job in London, for example, the employee would be expected to drive to the office from their home & pick up a pool car to drive to the temporary workplace. The only reason for travelling to the office is to pick up a pool car, which is useful when you live near the office but obviously not so useful when you live 6-7 hours away by car; all the equipment is permanently installed in the studios. If I was to travel directly to the studios would I be able to claim travel expenses from HMRC & if so, how much?

Many thanks!

paulus

There are two things to consider here; company policy/ terms and conditions and the tax treatment. It seems that the company has decided that it will not meet the expense so if this is what has been agreed as part of the T&cs then you have little scope to claim the expense. As for the tax treatment, it sounds very much like you are atending for a temporary purpose each time you visit. Even though a contract may stipulate that Herts is your normal office the facts indicate that this is not the tax position. I would expect that you'd be able to claim tax relief on these expenses.