Business mileage

esmerobbo

zagfles wrote: »

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

If he drives from home to their office rather then by public transport there is! Or do they take the car in their briefcase?

If they start from home and go somewhere on business there is no "commute", but if they go to the office and then go out in the car the trip to the office is a "commute"!

If this is not the case HMRC owe me a lot of money! However I have always lost the argument with my accountant and HRMC.

zagfles

esmerobbo wrote: »

If he drives from home to their office rather then by public transport there is! Or do they take the car in their briefcase?

If they start from home and go somewhere on business there is no "commute", but if they go to the office and then go out in the car the trip to the office is a "commute"!

If this is not the case HMRC owe me a lot of money! However I have always lost the argument with my accountant and HRMC.

The OP said he goes direct from home. Not via the office.

If he does stop at the office it depends if it's "incidental", I pasted the HMRC rules earlier.

DoaM

To my mind, an incidental stop at the office would be, for example, to pick up demo units/samples before heading off to a customer. Thus mileage would be from home to the customer.

However if you went to the office for a couple of hours and THEN went to the customer I'd not class this as incidental and so mileage would be from the office to customer and not home to customer.

Manxman_in_exile

zagfles wrote: »

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.

So are you saying the OP can claim business "mileage" less their commuting costs they would otherwise have incurred via public transport? As I said earlier , I often walked (3 miles ) to work so I incurred no costs (except to my personal time). So if I took my car into work to go to a business meeting at a different site, I could claim all that mileage back without any deduction, because it cost me nothing to walk to work?


That might be true, but it seems bonkers to me. The OP obviously doesn't agree!

zagfles

DoaM wrote: »

To my mind, an incidental stop at the office would be, for example, to pick up demo units/samples before heading off to a customer. Thus mileage would be from home to the customer.

However if you went to the office for a couple of hours and THEN went to the customer I'd not class this as incidental and so mileage would be from the office to customer and not home to customer.

That's pretty much HMRC's definition.

zagfles

Manxman_in_exile wrote: »

So are you saying the OP can claim business "mileage" less their commuting costs they would otherwise have incurred via public transport?

"Can" in what sense? I'm saying it's reasonable and in the spirit of most company's expenses policy. HMRC allow you to claim the full mileage with no deduction at all if you travel direct from home, or only stop at the office "incidently".

As I said earlier , I often walked (3 miles ) to work so I incurred no costs (except to my personal time). So if I took my car into work to go to a business meeting at a different site, I could claim all that mileage back without any deduction, because it cost me nothing to walk to work?

See above. Been discussed. But the OP was talking about going direct, not stopping the office.

That might be true, but it seems bonkers to me. The OP obviously doesn't agree!

Why should someone be out of pocket for travelling on company business?

Company rules don't have to agree with HMRC rules, but if the company rules are more generous than HMRC allow, the difference is taxable, just like the OP gets 50p a mile which is more than HMRC allow so 5p is taxable.

If someone normally cycles or walks into work but has to stop in the office for something significant before going on a business trip, then HMRC will regard the trip to the office as commuting and not business. But the company could recognise the extra cost incurred and pay the employee via payroll (ie sujbect to tax). They do it where I work eg if we're called into the office for something urgent at a weekend. It's commuting as far as HMRC are concerned, but the company recognise there's an extra cost to the employee and so pay grossed up expenses via payroll.

Similarly, if the company rules are less generous than HMRC, the employee can usually claim tax relief on the difference. So if the company make the OP chop off commute costs from a direct from home business trip, then he could get tax relief on that deduction.