Employee milage claim

wayneduffell · 20 October 2020 at 10:57AM

My company has introduced a new milage policy that supposedly been bought in by HMRC, although the HMRC website has little information.

Basically if we travel to multiple places of work but have been there for longer than 2 years, we are now not allowed to claim regardless of the distance? Before we could claim the difference, so for me to the office is 11 mile, if my firstly/last journey was 20 mile I could claim 9 mile. This supposedly has been scrapped by HMRC?

I work for a charity and my job involves travelling to multiple schools throughout the week with me rarely going to my office. As my job is similar to a sales representative which travels to multiple destinations surely I should be able to claim the difference?

Comms69 · 20 October 2020 at 11:25AM

Nothing to do with HMRC, the rate is 45p a mile against your tax allowance and anyone can claim that.

Employers are not obliged to pay mileage.

daisy23169 · 20 October 2020 at 6:45PM

It sounds like they're referring to the permanent workplace rule, which applies if you work at the same location on an ongoing basis. There is a 2 year rule when determining whether a temporary workplace becomes a permanent one or not, hence why I think that's what they're talking about.

Do you visit the same set of schools every week or is it completely variable with new schools being added and other ones being dropped on a continuous basis?

If, for example, you visit the same 5 schools on the same rotation on a weekly basis and have done for years, then they would arguably be considered permanent workplaces for mileage purposes and as such any mileage payments would be taxable as it would effectively count as normal commuting.

As above though, employers aren't actually obliged to pay mileage. You can claim tax relief on upto 45p per mile for business mileage, but if the permanent workplace thing applies to your situation then the tax relief doesn't apply either.