Self employed teacher and mileage

dummydaydream

Hi. Looking for some advice about claiming mileage. I have recently become a self employed languages teacher. I will be fulfilling contracts in 3 schools for 2 different companies that provide language teachers. On 2 days a week I will be travelling between schools at lunchtime.

Can I legitimately claim that my house, where I keep all my resources and paperwork, is my place of work or do I have to treat my journey to school as a commute and only claim the mileage on the journey between schools, which would obviously be a lot less? If I can claim the mileage at 45p per mile then I probably won't have much or any tax to pay but if not I'll have to be disciplined and keep some back each month.

Does anybody know HMRC's position on this?

Thanks.

pleasedelete

Hi. You dont claim mileage from anyone. You deduct it from your income before you pay tax.

The rates are on the hmrc website and depend on the mileage down (more or less than 10,000)

So you earn £200 in a day. You travel 20 miles and claim at 45p (or appropriate rate after 10,000 miles ) - so you pay yourself 9.00. you then have an income of £191 to pay tax on.

Thus assumes that you invoice the companies and they pay an invoice rather than them paying you a salary. It is hard to see how you could claim enough mileage not to have to pay any tax.

dummydaydream

Hi. I didn't word it properly as I know it is put on the SA form as allowable expenses. I do invoice the companies so I just wanted to be sure I could count all the mileage. It's not full time but I will be covering 180 miles a week between home and the 3 schools. I can only work 38 weeks a year as that is the teaching time in state schools so it's not a massive salary.

Thanks for help.

Pennywise

If you have a regular travel pattern between the schools, and don't actually do any teaching at home, I don't think you'll be able to claim travel at all. You'll have three permanent workplaces. Home to a permanent workplace isn't allowable for tax not is travel between permanent workplaces.

To claim travel costs against income, you really need your home to be a proper "business base". Doing a bit of admin work at home isn't enough. Now if you also did private tuition at your home and if the pattern of working at schools was more flexible rather than being fixed, you may have been able to argue your home was your business base and then travel would be allowable.

dummydaydream

Are the schools permanent work places? The companies have 12 month contracts with the schools and I fulfill the contracts but I 'm not obliged to stay for 12 months. I can walk away if I find other work.

real1314

sounds like normal commuting to me.

if you worked a major part of your time at 1 school, you might be able to claim for travel to the others, but I *think* you'd have to be at >60% of time at school 1.

i'm not an expert though.

chrismac1

I think that there is at least a case for arguing that your home is your "base of operations". I cannot see a difference in principle between what you are doing and what some Olympics contractors were doing.

I am assuming that from home you will do some lesson planning and preparation, possibly some marking of work, and commercial stuff such as raising of invoices. This is more than at least one Olympic village contractor who won his Tax Tribunal case was doing.

Another parallel is with the recent HMRC onslaught - often successful - on doctors especially locum and phone helpline ones. The doctors who successfully fought off their enquiries were the ones who could show they were writing medical reports and doing other tasks from home which could not possibly have been done at the customer sites.

So I advise that if you do claim travel from home to these workplaces that you pull together clear and compelling evidence of the tasks that are being done from home, ideally tasks that it would be unrealistic to do at the schools.

chrismac1

Kenyon v CRC 2011
Kenyon was a pipe fitter from the Wirral working on the construction of the Olympic site. The Tribunal held that preparing quotes and raising invoices was sufficient evidence that the Wirral was his "base of operations". Hence a whole shed load of fuel costs and London B&B and meal costs were allowable at one stroke.

pleasedelete

dummydaydream wrote: »

Hi. I didn't word it properly as I know it is put on the SA form as allowable expenses. I do invoice the companies so I just wanted to be sure I could count all the mileage. It's not full time but I will be covering 180 miles a week between home and the 3 schools. I can only work 38 weeks a year as that is the teaching time in state schools so it's not a massive salary.

Thanks for help.

Well is should be. It should be at least £200 a day x 5 x 38 weeks? so £38,000

There is no way you should be getting less than £200 a day as a SELF EMPLOYED teacher. You wont be getting teachers pension etc. As an agency supply teacher you may get less but would usually get sick pay, holiday and pension.

dummydaydream

One company only pays £100 per day and £50 per half day so I could really do with keeping some of my petrol money

pleasedelete

Then you really don't sound like
1. you are self employed
2. you are being employed as a teacher- rather a support assistant

The only advantage to being a self employed teacher is that you get paid more- a lot of cover is done through agencies and then directly paid by schools where you get pension and holiday pay from them etc. If you work directly for some agencies there is no pension.

£100 a day is £19k a year- this is less than the minimum teachers salary. Why would anyone work as a teacher for that? Then you have no teachers pension. You also have no holiday pay as self employed- that is why you should be getting more than the basic pay rate- not less.

To get a teacher through an agency a school would have to pay at least that much.

You are being seriously exploited.