Company car fuel tax logging private miles to fuel advisory rate..

Fishy003

Hi,
I pay fuel benefit to use my company car for private mileage , it works out at £104 a month but I do hardly any private miles. At a rough estimate based on the tracker I do less than 5000 private miles a year as I live 2 miles from the office. I'm a office repair tech so sometimes I head off straight from home to a customers and bypass the office. 

I want to get rid of the fuel benefit, log my private miles and pay the fuel advisory rate to my employer which changes all the time but currently 10p a mile.

What information do I log? Do I need to write the actual odometer reading at start and end of journey or can I just put the miles travelled? 
Date, time, start location, end location, miles travelled, is that enough? 

I've been looking at apps to log this info but most are not 100% accurate few miles missed here and there . Even gps trackers are a little out so how do I account for this in my payment for miles to my employer? 

The one other thing that is confusing say I set off from a customers and I go straight home as I've finished late is that private or business? I live 2 miles from work so would it be enough to just minus 2 miles from the journey? Or what if I nip home for dinner it's still in business hours but I guess it could be classed as private? 

Sorry for all the questions but I don't wanna get fined by hmrc in the future if I mess up some how. Its very hard to find any concrete guide to doing this even my accountant isn't sure on the fines hmrc could give me for screwing up . 

I'm sure someone must do this already and it works fine.. 

Fishy003

What is really scary is hmrc say you are liable for the full fuel benefit if they can prove you have underpaid by 1 mile but they don't really explain how to keep an accurate record. Most days for me would be going to and from work so 4 miles a day and sometimes I could start or finish at home and not go into work.

Even if you wrote down the odometer it doesn't record that accurate as its only accurate to 1 mile so if you went to and from work every day and it was say 2.5 miles every day you would not report 0.5 of a mile, you would under report over 100 miles in the year and probably be easy pickings for hmrc.

How can you be 100% and have very small degree of error ? I did think just add say a few miles to every day or just pay 1p more than the fuel advisory rate so even if they said you where not reporting accurate you could say all the extra 1p's should account for that . 

missile

Is there anyone else in your company doing the same?
Why do you need an accountant? In my experience HMRC are reasonable and are happy to provide advice when asked. If and when you are investigated a simple log book, i.e. recording purpose of each journey & miles travelled would be sufficient.

Fishy003

Our in house accountant is a bit clueless so our company uses a outsourced firm. You say reasonable but they where not reasonable in the past another guy tried what I'm suggesting and he lives 35 miles from the office and works from home 99% of the time but because of the 1% days he was driving to the office he never written those in as those where private mileage so they back dated it 6 years and fined him something like 4 grand. Anyway that doesn't really matter I just need to be 100% sure what ever I do is correct and fool proof.
No one in the firm does this currently as most live far from the office but with me I can save possibly £800 a year easy. 

Fishy003

What do you mean by purpose of trave ? You mean like I.e. Trip to shops , journey from work to home .

I'm right in thinking only private miles would be logged? 

molerat

The easiest way is to keep a simple log in the car with columns for date - start read - end read - Work or Private - reason. Whole miles readings will do as it averages out.  You don't need to log every single journey, just start and end of each transition between work and private. If doing this HMRC will not be coming after you for the odd mile, it is people that keep no records then roll a dice at the end of the month to come up with a (low) figure that they want to weed out.

Fishy003

molerat said:

The easiest way is to keep a simple log in the car with columns for date - start read - end read - Work or Private - reason. Whole miles readings will do as it averages out.  You don't need to log every single journey, just start and end of each transition between work and private. If doing this HMRC will not be coming after you for the odd mile, it is people that keep no records then roll a dice at the end of the month to come up with a (low) figure that they want to weed out.

That makes sense, yeah I'm thinking im going to get fined for missing 0.5 of a mile.
So I log all private trips, so if I was going to the shops... 
Date/start location/end location/distance/reason for travel
8/7 . Home. Shops. 2 miles. Shopping
8/7 . Shops. Home. 2 miles. Shopping

Would that be enough or should I write start and end readings of odometer? Should I write the time as well or is just the date enough?

What is confusing is the journey to the office is private. What if I used the car to go get dinner is that private or business?
The other scenario say I had a meeting at a customers premises, so I'm going straight there in the morning, would I need to still include a leg in the journey to account for the home to work leg, even though I'm just going straight out?

Fishy003

Please someone must know the answer to this...

If I set off from home to go to my first call which can be 100's of miles away from my home is that private or business miles? And do I need to log the journey if it's not private?

Thanks. 

Jeremy535897

There are a lot of detailed rules. See https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim31800
Travel only has to be incurred "necessarily" rather than "wholly, exclusively and necessarily. See https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim32011 for answers to commuting type questions.

Fishy003

Jeremy535897 said:

There are a lot of detailed rules. See
Travel only has to be incurred "necessarily" rather than "wholly, exclusively and necessarily. See  for answers to commuting type questions.

Thanks so much for that I rang HMRC twice and they where very vague but those examples make perfect sense. So days I'm not going into the office but instead travelling to a business to do a repair then according to those examples are business miles.

One more question. Do I need to log everything both private and business miles? We have trackers on the car and smart apps I can use to do that but they could be out by a few miles here and there, would that suffice?

I'm a bit confused on how to break it up i.e. say I went to shop A from home then to shop B then to shop C then back to home and the total travelled was 11 mile would I write 4 seperate entries or would they be happy with a total and just a date?

Private Miles Log July
Date Start Od End Od Desc
10/07 10000 10011 Shopping trip to Thornaby
11/07 10011 10030 Home->Stockton->Whitby->Home
12/07 10030 10032 Home->Work
12/07 10058 10060 Work->Home
13/07 10150 10152 Work->Home
14/07 No Miles Customers first thing then finished in Leeds then drove home
15/07 10320 10322 Home->Work

Would that be good enough for hmrc? Its quite hard for me to write times and odometers as some days during the week I do no private miles as I go straight to a customers and sometimes I finish on the road at a customers. 

Jeremy535897

Check how you measure up to the advice here:
https://workmileagetaxrebate.co.uk/what-records-must-be-kept-to-claim-business-mileage/