Travel expenses of a self-employed window cleaner working from home

marinot

Hello everyone,

I am just starting up a self-employment as a window cleaner. I work from home.

So, from the taxman’s viewpoint, I do a so called itinerant job, and I should be allowed to claim as Income Tax allowable expenses not only my daily journeys between my individual customers, but in any my working day also the journey between home and my first customer, as well the journey between my last customer and home.

Anyway, some people on the internet say that to be able to do so, I will need to give a proof to the taxman that every my working day I work at home at least a while before my setting off to my first window cleaning job as well as another while after returning home from my daily round.

What is your experience? Should I keep really detailed home use records with the time of starting and ending of any business work activity carried out at home as well as with an extensive description of any such activity? And should I also keep similarly extensive mileage records with not only odometer, but also time readings?

Any experience or informed opinion will be most appreciated.

Pennywise

As long as your home is the base of your business, you can claim mileage for all business related journeys, including the first and last journey from/to home.

"Base" means where you operate from, i.e. where you do the admin, where you keep your ladder and bucket, and which is roughly the centre of your client base.

However, if say, you lived in Manchester and travelled every day to Leeds to do your window round, then it's a completely different story. Even moreso if you kept your ladder and bucket in a lock up in Leeds!

marinot

Thank you very much, Pennywise, you seem to understand the rules very well.

Do I understand correctly, that if I indeed keep my records at home, keep my tools of trade here overnight as well, and my home is roughly at the centre of the area I service,

I DO NOT need to show the taxman any detailed records of any my business related activities immediately before and after my daily round, because I DO NOT need to show, that immediately before my setting off and immediately after my return I always work at home?

And do you also suggest, that - also given the fulfillment of the above stated conditions - I do not need to record start and finish times of my journeys into the mileage log, because the date, odometer readings and description of each of my business journeys are altogether sufficient per se?

If you find few more precious minutes to address also this, I will most appreciate it.

somethingcorporate

Self-assessment tax is done on a trust basis and the chance of you being audited/investigated is likely to be slim.

You should keep whatever records you think would be required if HMRC ever did come knocking.

You won't need to record the times of your journeys or activities at home before or after work, merely that home is your base location. Keep a record of your mileage in a notebook in the van with just a basic date, to, from, milegae (and odo readings if you want to belt and braces).

marinot

Dear somethingcorporate

Thank you very much for your words of encouragement. Not only are they exactly what I wanted to read here, but they seem to be very plausible, too :T:j:rotfl: