Claiming Mileage Allowance

KID77

Hi, I am looking for some advice please. My husband has had a lease car since November 2011. He was paid £7800 pa from his previous company as a car allowance and had a fuel card which coveered business and personal miles. He started a new job in January this year and his car allowance has gone down to £5700, he has fuel card but his company charge him monthly for personal fuel. He does approx 25000 business miles per year and 5000 personal miles.
We now have to do a self assessment linked to the high earning child benefit thing and someone said we should be claiming mileage relief on our car. We have yet to complete our SA for 2014/2015 but just wondering do we put this claim under Business Travel Expenses and do i work it out at 10000 x 45p and 15000 x 25p? We have mileage logs but when do i send these to hmrc?
We haven't claimed these for past years so does anyone know if and how we go about doing so?
We have been pretty clueless about this sort of thing but are now trying to sort our finances and I want to make sure we are not paying more than we need to.
Your advice is appreciated, thank you

jimmo

This reply assumes that the £7800 pa and £5700pa you gave are gross figures of money paid to your husband and were subject to PAYE along with his wages. Sometimes on here people give figures for car allowances when they actually mean they have a company car of their own choice subject to their employer’s budget limit.
You then have two things to consider.
1) The use of the fuel card
2) The claim to mileage relief.
I believe that the easiest way is to deal with each of those separately.
1) The use of the fuel card creates a benefit in kind which your employer reports to HMRC the total amount spent on the fuel card less any amounts the employee has reimbursed in respect of private mileage. They do that on form P11d.
2) The individual then claims tax relief on his business mileage on, as you say 10,000 @ 45p and 15000 @25p.
However it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes employers in your first example only report the value of the fuel they have paid for that represents private mileage. Sometimes employers in your second example report nothing.
Either way your husband is liable to tax on private fuel paid for by his employer and entitled to tax relief (at 45p and 25p) less what his employer has paid for, for business mileage. Your problem will then be getting to grips with what has happened.
Your husband could be entitled to a pretty substantial refund. He could also be entitled to nothing but I think you need to try to understand what has happened, also bearing in mind that there will be a knock on effect on what he may have to repay on child benefit.

KID77

Thank you very much for your reply Jimmo.
Yes the allowance is added to his salary and he pays 40% tax on it. In his previous job the company reported only personal mileage on p11d from what i can work out. He submitted his mileage logs to them monthly so that would make sense.
So for the tax years 2011/12 and then 2012/13 I would like to try and claim. On our Self Assessment log in those years arent showing so I think I may have to complete a P87 form....would be lovely to get something back :-)
I will be doing his tax return this week for the year 2014/15 so the child benefit will obviously be included in that year but i think we should still be showing as due a small refund.....
Its all such a minefield and the HMRC certainly dont make it easy for you :-)

jimmo

Good luck with your claims but I seriously doubt that you will be able to use forms P87 for 2012/13.
You can only use a P87 if your allowable expenses are less than £2500. That’s the allowable expenses, not the amount of the repayment.
You could be OK for 2011/12 as it’s a part year but I would think that if you have to do an SA Return for 2012/13 you may as well do 2011/12 as well. That way it should all be handled in one go by HMRC.
I don’t have access to SA myself but I thought that if you are logged into SA you can choose to make a Return for any year even if HMRC haven’t asked for one. Hopefully another poster will be able to advise. If not your husband will need to phone the SA helpline.

KID77

Thanks again for reply.
Yeah it wont let us complete p87 online so i will print sa form and post for year 2011/12 and write a letter regarding the year 2012/13 as we already completed this online before we realised we could claim mileage relief.
We may not get anywhere but worth a try.
Thank you