Business mileage

Le_Kirk

Manxman_in_exile wrote: »

Having re-read this thread, I think the only person who can answer this is your employer. Ask them.

............... and then for the sake of our sanity come back and tell us what they say!!!

elsien

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.
.

That's how my various employers have always worked it.

Baldbloke

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.

The reason for asking the question is that I don't normally use my car to travel to and from the office, I use public transport. I only take the car when it's needed for business travel. I don't see why or how the company can choose to deduct the mileage to & from the office, that I wouldn't normally drive, rather than the actual fare I normally pay.

Manxman_in_exile

Baldbloke wrote: »

The reason for asking the question is that I don't normally use my car to travel to and from the office, I use public transport. I only take the car when it's needed for business travel. [ I used to do exactly the same as you]. I don't see why or how the company can choose to deduct the mileage to & from the office, that I wouldn't normally drive, rather than the actual fare I normally pay. [ I can understand exactly why they do that. My old employer would have done the same].

What costs you incur on using public transport to commute to work are irrelevant to your question. That's what you choose to do. (Probably for a good reason - as I say above, that's what I used to do too.)


Your question is about your company's policy for claiming back business travel expenses - and that's about mileage and not "costs".


If I understand your "logic" correctly, if I walked to work (which I frequently did - incurring no cost except to my own time) I'd be entitled to claim all my mileage back with no deduction for commuting mileage. That's bonkers.


Sorry if I've misunderstood your point but your OP was not very clear. (eg when you said "return to work", did you mean "return to home from work"?).


You may see it as a point of principle but your employer may see it as you being "difficult".


(EDIT: Just to make it clearer: You only use your car when you have to do business travel. Your round commute would be 80 miles (40 x 2?). You clock up 200 miles on business. Your employer says you can claim back 120 miles (200 - 80) travel expenses. That basically seems reasonable to me. Your employer can put in whatever expenses policy they like. But as zagfles pointed out, they may be disingenuous saying it's because of HMRC)

Baldbloke

Manxman_in_exile wrote: »

If I understand your "logic" correctly, if I walked to work (which I frequently did - incurring no cost except to my own time) I'd be entitled to claim all my mileage back with no deduction for commuting mileage. That's bonkers.

Not sure I understand why this would be bonkers?

Manxman_in_exile

Baldbloke wrote: »

Not sure I understand why this would be bonkers?

Err - sorry. I'm obviously not capable of explaining it in a clearly understandable way. I apologise.


FWIW - if I understand you correctly, it would never occur to me to do what you are suggesting you should be able to do.


As I said in a previous post - the only way to resolve this is by asking your employer. But I think you've only got two hopes - and one of those is Bob Hope...

esmerobbo

Are you actually losing money?
You say it costs £11 by commute, how much does it actually cost to take your car?

There is nothing stopping the company paying the commute mileage however it would be taxable.

Bigphil1474

OP, I'm in the same boat as you i.e. use my own car and get paid mileage. The way it works at my place (I work for a local authority, and they are pretty good at rules!) is as follows :-


a. Drive from office to a job then back to the office - all miles claimed as business miles
b. Drive from home to a job and then to office - claim the excess miles - miles that are above normal home to work journey - as business miles
c. Drive from office to job then home - same applies - excess miles claimed
For b and c - the normal commute home/office miles go down as 'unclaimed miles'. If you do loads of these, there is a way of claiming back some of the tax, but you need to do loads of unclaimed miles to make it worth it.


If you travel by bus to work - no miles claimed or deducted or required. You would only claim the cost of travel by bus for work journeys e.g. you get into the office, go get on a bus and buy a ticket - claim that back. If you buy a day pass to commute and travel for work, there's no extra cost for the work travel so you claim nothing and deduct nothing.


To be honest, your company are right about mileage to/from home- it's not fully work miles - treated differently. However, they are talking nonsense about automatically deducting home/work miles. You don't 'deduct' any miles, you just simply claim only the relevant miles. Use a note book, write down your start/finish miles and claim those - any commuting miles are irrelevant other than as above.

zagfles

esmerobbo wrote: »

Are you actually losing money?
You say it costs £11 by commute, how much does it actually cost to take your car?

There is nothing stopping the company paying the commute mileage however it would be taxable.

There is no "commute mileage" if he starts from home!

zagfles

Manxman_in_exile wrote: »

Err - sorry. I'm obviously not capable of explaining it in a clearly understandable way. I apologise.


FWIW - if I understand you correctly, it would never occur to me to do what you are suggesting you should be able to do.


As I said in a previous post - the only way to resolve this is by asking your employer. But I think you've only got two hopes - and one of those is Bob Hope...

What the OP is asking for is completely reasonable. Most company's expenses policies are based on the principle that the employee should not lose out, or gain, through expenses while travelling on company business.

So claiming actual mileage done, minus actual commute costs that would have been incurred had the OP goine into normal place of work, achieves this.

HMRC rules are more generous because they allow for possibilties of season tickets/cycling/walking/lift etc to normal place of work, ie zero marginal commute cost.