Reclaim car mileage from HMRC

Zukkini

Hi all,

In a previous thread "cost of having a motorbike", someone raised a question on why I don't reclaim the 33,000 miles that I have racked up on my car? I am a contractor working near Heathrow and my main office is in Victoria and I live in East London.

So I wanted to know, if anybody has done the mileage reclaims, how was it like to claim? How long did it take? What do you need to provide? And do you need to show receipts, exact route of your journey (for my 33k miles, I haven't recorded it properly)? Also, can I only reclaim from my house to LHR or from Victoria to LHR because I am making that journey anyway?

See, my Google Maps has recorded all of my journeys, however, some of them are personal and it would take absolutely weeks for me to cover 1 year and a half of journeys (differentiating between work and personal). Unless I can pay an accountant or someone todo it for me? Do people do this type of service?

I bought my car brand new with 0 on the clock, I can show proof that I have been working at my current location since I got the car and show them the mileage I have accumulated with the Google Maps tracking (no differentiation between personal and work however, just give them in). And it clearly shows me going from East London to LHR everyday, 5 days a week.

Some advise would be very ideal.

System

Over how long have you been doing that, and how long is/was your contract for?

Zukkini

!!!!!! wrote: »

Over how long have you been doing that, and how long is/was your contract for?

1 year and 6 months exactly

LandyAndy

And are you on the company payroll or do you bill them?

System

You claim you have done 33k miles. By my calculation even going via Victoria 5 days a week only comes out at around 16k for the 18 months.

You need to sit down and work out the business mileage that you have done as well as answering the query about your employment status.

You say you have been doing it for 18 months, how long is your contract?

Zukkini

LandyAndy wrote: »

And are you on the company payroll or do you bill them?

Company Payroll.

!!!!!! wrote: »

You claim you have done 33k miles. By my calculation even going via Victoria 5 days a week only comes out at around 16k for the 18 months.

You need to sit down and work out the business mileage that you have done as well as answering the query about your employment status.

You say you have been doing it for 18 months, how long is your contract?

There are 3 ways to LHR - Central London, North Circular or M25. I used to take M25 a lot, which triples the mileage (no choice sometimes, complete gridlock in Central and congestion charge is not free).

Contract is around 2 years.

Zukkini

And technically speaking it is past LHR - Harmondsworth to be more exact.

Ebe_Scrooge

If you're on the company payroll, then I don't think you can claim mileage between home and your regular place of work. If you're a freelancer running your own Ltd. company who invoices the client, then you can claim mileage as a business expense, meaning you pay less corporation tax. But if you work there for more than 2 years, HMRC will class you as a "permanent employee" and you can't then claim travel expenses.

Zukkini

Ebe_Scrooge wrote: »

If you're on the company payroll, then I don't think you can claim mileage between home and your regular place of work. If you're a freelancer running your own Ltd. company who invoices the client, then you can claim mileage as a business expense, meaning you pay less corporation tax. But if you work there for more than 2 years, HMRC will class you as a "permanent employee" and you can't then claim travel expenses.

Technically this is not my permanent place of work. I am contracted from my company to an airline company.

Is there solicitors or something that have expertise in these fields that I could talk to? And if I could pay them to do it for me if I just give them everything they need?

oscarward

Either fill in a form or do a self assessment. If it's a large amount they usually ask for SA anyway.

I've just done it, company pays me a taxed lump sum for the car and reduced fuel per mile.

I then recover difference between mileage payment and 45p/ mile (up to 10k miles, reduces thereafter) from HMRC. If you do online SA and give them your bank details then payment comes back in a day or so direct to the account if above a certain amount otherwise they adjust tax code.

HMRC also preload my tax code with expected mileage each year. I've never lied and have documentation but they've never asked for supporting information.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

Zukkini wrote: »

Technically this is not my permanent place of work. I am contracted from my company to an airline company.

You don't claim mileage from HMRC, you get tax relief on any payments you receive from your company, so if your company are not paying you mileage to go to the company then you have nothing to claim, they are considering that you are travelling in your own car out of the goodness of your heart.

So what normally happens is that if you get a placement outside of your normal place of work, you discuss with your employer how they will compensate you for the extra expense of travelling to this other site. If they are happy to pay a mileage allowance then there is a limit to the amount you can claim - there is an initial mileage that you can claim at a higher rate and over a certain mileage you can claim at a lower level. The normal process is that you put in a mileage claim to your own company, they then pay you that claim and they make appropriate tax adjustments on the payroll, which they declare on your end of year P11D. HMRC do not get involved normally aside from the usual payroll process.

So all you get from the HMRC is that they kindly do not charge you tax on your legitimate expenses. HMRC do not pay you an allowance for working elsewhere.

So to really answer your question, we would need to understand what arrangements you have for any sort of payment from the company for a company car, payment in lieu or mileage allowance and so on. If you don't have this information then you need to be talking to the company HR department, not really anything to do with HMRC.