Claiming Mileage

wendy96

I was recently employed as an admin assistant for a care company. The main part of my job I was working in the offices but I also worked both before and after office hours as a carer. (for the same company). I also worked on weekends - basically I worked 7 days a week.

I was paid £8 per hour - whether I was based in the office or out working as a carer.

From what I can see I am entitled to some sort of mileage allowance but I need a bit of help and wondered if someone could advise.

I have kept details of all visits made during the time I was employed. Can I claim from home to the first visit? and again, home after the last visit?

My previous employer didn't pay any mileage at all and in just a few months I 'clocked up' quite a few miles.

Can anyone help?

billieboy_2

I do this type of work part-time and the way we are told to do it is you don't get paid for travelling to the first call as it's deemed to be travelling to a place of work, so the way I do it is to claim from home to the second call and throughout the day to the last call. However, your position was different in that you travelled to your office so I would have thought you could claim mileage from the office to the first call but not the mileage to get home. I guess if someone is going from call to call, they would claim for travelling to the second call from the first and not claim for the final trip to home. Hope this makes sense and helps!

The_Magnificent_Spoon

Your employer should have gone through all this with you! Have you asked them? They are able to claim tax back on any mileage you do for business, other than 'commuting to and from your normal place of work' at a rate of usually 45p per mile, which employers tend to pass back to employees.

If your last employer didn't do this, they were screwing you over to save them a tiny bit of admin. It's pretty standard.

The best way to calculate your mileage claims, is if your normal place of work is the office and its 7 miles away, record your trips and daily mileage, then subtract 14 from your daily mileage. Do this for all 30/31 days off the month, add all the days mileage up then * .45 to get your entitlement in £

If your normal place of work is your home (ie you work from home the majority of days) then all your mileage is eligible to be claimed.

As said, your employer should have all the info, and their own forms/methods for submitting your claims. Go ask!

The_Magnificent_Spoon

Billieboy - the important bit is the fact you're not allowed to claim for commuting to and from your normal place of work. If you just do out calls all day and don't have a normal place of work as such, your normal place of work is considered your home. All your mileage should be able to be claimed including to your first call, and home from your last.

Dazed_and_confused

wendy96 wrote: »

I was recently employed as an admin assistant for a care company. The main part of my job I was working in the offices but I also worked both before and after office hours as a carer. (for the same company). I also worked on weekends - basically I worked 7 days a week.

I was paid £8 per hour - whether I was based in the office or out working as a carer.

From what I can see I am entitled to some sort of mileage allowance but I need a bit of help and wondered if someone could advise.

I have kept details of all visits made during the time I was employed. Can I claim from home to the first visit? and again, home after the last visit?

My previous employer didn't pay any mileage at all and in just a few months I 'clocked up' quite a few miles.

Can anyone help?

You have titled this thread 'Claiming Mileage'. You do realise only your employer can pay you mileage. If you are really asking about claiming relief from HMRC then you need to remember the tax office only give tax relief, they don't pay mileage in place of an employer.

So, assuming this thread is about the tax year just ended, the first question you need to consider is how much tax did you pay last year?

If you didn't pay any tax then you're not going to get anything refunded by HMRC. If you paid £100 tax the maximum refund you could get is £100, even if you were to claim say £5000 in job expenses.

wendy96

Thank you everyone for your replies.

Just to clarify: I am not working for this company anymore - I lasted five months - terrible job. I paid tax and insurance.

When I asked my employer about mileage all I was told was that they don't pay.

To try and make extra I would go out on calls - before I started at the office and after. As I said, my usual place was at the office but the majority of days that I worked there I would drive some 16/17 miles to the first call, then on to the second etc etc and then I would go to the office. So I'm not going thinking of claiming to the office - but purely to the first port of call, etc.

As I worked weekends - well the office was closed at the weekend - so shouldn't I be able to claim from home to first call?

I had a tax rebate a few weeks ago - it was only afterwards I realised that maybe I could apply for some sort of 'mileage relief'. I haven't worked since I left so things are very very tight.

So very confusing!