Business mileage

Baldbloke

Hi All

First post - please be gentle!

I use my own car for work. We are paid 50p a mile, 5p of which is taxed. Until now the procedure was to claim every journey as starting and ending at the office even if I went straight to and from visits from home. Not sure why, but it's been that way for many years.

Management have now said that's non-compliant with HMRC regs, which is probably correct. They are introducing a system where you claim the day's mileage minus the return journey to work. The thing is, I wouldn't drive to the office unless I had work-related journeys to do. I would use public transport. Therefore, is there a way that I can claim my day's mileage minus my return fare on public transport? This works slightly in my favour but it's more the principle.

Thanks.

jimjames

But if you're using your car doesn't that mean you're not spending out on public transport so it evens out?

Baldbloke

Sorry if I haven't made myself clear. I don't use my car every day. Some days are spent at the office and I commute on public transport on those days. The return drive to the office is 40 miles. The fare is about £11.

We're being told that, when we use our cars for business, the mileage claim should be reduced by £20 whereas I believe it should be £11 to account for my normal commuting costs.

zagfles

HMRC allow you to claim from home if that's where you started. You shouldn't be claiming from work if you went straight from home. It would definitely be against their rules to claim from work if that was a longer distance, as you'd be claiming for mileage you didn't actually do.

However some employers want you to knock off the home-work mileage where you start from home, that is not an HMRC requirement, that's just the employer trying to save money.

If they insist on doing this then you will need to maintain separate records of mileage, HMRC rules mileage and company rules mileage. You might be able to claim tax relief on the difference.

See https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517266/490.pdf for chapter and verse.

jimmy_cricket

Baldbloke wrote: »

Sorry if I haven't made myself clear. I don't use my car every day. Some days are spent at the office and I commute on public transport on those days. The return drive to the office is 40 miles. The fare is about £11.

We're being told that, when we use our cars for business, the mileage claim should be reduced by £20 whereas I believe it should be £11 to account for my normal commuting costs.

My employer tried this one even though I have no office space and work from home.
They would not see reason on it so I no longer had a car available that I could use for their business.
They soon saw sense.

pramsay13

There is the mileage you do for work and what you can claim at 50p per mile (which I don't fully understand from your explanation). As this is over the 45p per mile allowance (up to 10,000 miles) you are taxed on the 5p difference.
If you do mileage for work that you can't claim from your work you can still claim it as part of your mileage allowance from HMRC.
You cannot claim your journey from home to a regular place of work.

Baldbloke

pramsay13 wrote: »

There is the mileage you do for work and what you can claim at 50p per mile (which I don't fully understand from your explanation). As this is over the 45p per mile allowance (up to 10,000 miles) you are taxed on the 5p difference.

The employer can pay any amount for mileage it's just that anything above 45p counts as salary and is taxed. I don't know why it's 50p, it was that rate before I started.

esmerobbo

You cant claim for getting to and from a regular place of work so the £11 fare is not deductible.

If you use your car to get to and from work and during work use it for business purposes then you can claim for the mileage less the getting to and from the office.

If you had a company car you would be taxed for getting the benefit of getting too and from work in the car.

zagfles

esmerobbo wrote: »

You cant claim for getting to and from a regular place of work so the £11 fare is not deductible.

If you use your car to get to and from work and during work use it for business purposes then you can claim for the mileage less the getting to and from the office.

If you had a company car you would be taxed for getting the benefit of getting too and from work in the car.

The OP was talking about going direct from home to get another site. The whole of that journey is a business journey.

If he stops at work on the way it depends whether that stop was "incidental" or not. See 3.48 & 3.49 in the link above.

esmerobbo

Baldbloke wrote: »

Sorry if I haven't made myself clear. I don't use my car every day. Some days are spent at the office and I commute on public transport on those days. The return drive to the office is 40 miles. The fare is about £11.

We're being told that, when we use our cars for business, the mileage claim should be reduced by £20 whereas I believe it should be £11 to account for my normal commuting costs.

zagfles wrote: »

The OP was talking about going direct from home to get another site. The whole of that journey is a business journey.

If he stops at work on the way it depends whether that stop was "incidental" or not. See 3.48 & 3.49 in the link above.

I was answering the OP's question on the difference between their mileage and their commute costs. sorry if I didn't make it clear.

Le_Kirk

As an (ex) company car driver, I do not understand the employer saying, you cannot claim for the return journey to work. Let's say you drive to the office and, since it is your regular place of employment, you cannot claim mileage but then you drive 300 miles to an out-of-office site for work purposes, for which you can claim. Are they saying you cannot claim for the 300 mile return journey? I think if this was the case my car would suddenly become unavailable forcing them to buy pool cars or fix you up with a hire car every time you went out on THIER business!