Receipts for Mileage Claim in own car

Giblets

HI,
hopefully not a complicated one, but joined a new company, and claiming 45p for business miles in my own car (I do not receive a car allowance or anything else towards it). I've worked for a few companies, and never before been asked to provide fuel receipts when claiming the 45p/mile. Being a covid year, I've not exactly travelled a lot, so these are from a few months back, so not sure I have receipts for them (it's literally a couple of hundred miles only, so not huge sum).
So do I need to provide receipts to them, thought they would be more useful for myself?.
thanks

daveyjp

VAT Receipts may be needed as the company will be claiming the VAT on the fuel element of the mileage payment. 

jimjames

Can you save fuel receipts from now on? I've also never been asked for receipts for own car mileage. How would they tie up the receipt with the fuel used anyway?

daveyjp

jimjames said:

Can you save fuel receipts from now on? I've also never been asked for receipts for own car mileage. How would they tie up the receipt with the fuel used anyway?

No need to tie it up. You just need a VAT receipt which shows the amount of total VAT you have paid on fuel for the period of the mileage claim is more than the VAT being claimed by the company for the mileage paid.

As fuel VAT is only about 2.5p per mile for 45p a mile mileage claim its not too onerous.

Fill with 50 litres VAT will be £7-8.  If you do 100 say miles of business miles the company will claim back £2.50 VAT.

The requirements to supply receipts is likely to be a policy of larger companies with substantial VAT claims for business mileage as they are the ones HMRC are likely to target!

Grumpy_chap

The OP is paid a mileage allowance and therefore VAT receipts are not required.  Different rules if the OP buys fuel for the business use which is repaid (treated like any other expenses and there would be a VAT receipt).

Input tax when employees are paid a mileage allowance

Input tax is calculated by multiplying the fuel element of the mileage allowance by the VAT fraction (VAT rate divided by 100 + VAT rate).

Extracted from:

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-input-tax/vit55400 

daveyjp

From that link, which is the scheme I have been subject to in previous employment.

c. Use detailed mileage records to separate the business mileage from the private mileage

This option would be used if the business does not wish to apply scale charges. Detailed records must be kept to demonstrate that only the business element of the VAT charged on fuel has been treated as input tax.

For example; records show that the total mileage is 4,290, of which 3,165 is business mileage. The total cost of the fuel was £368.

• The cost of the business mileage is £368 x 3,165 / 4,290 = £271.49
• The input tax is £271.49 x VAT fraction (VAT rate divided by 100 + VAT rate)
• The cost of the private mileage is £368 x 1,125 / 4,290 = £96.51

If a business applies other calculations HMRC may check them to ensure that only the element of VAT on fuel relating to business use is claimed.

HMRC may check all the available documentary and oral evidence if a business says that:

• only input tax on business mileage has been claimed; and
• the private element has been excluded from the business accounts.

As the Phillips (G) case shows, the absence of records will generally make it difficult for a business to discharge the burden of proof that private motoring is not being funded by the business. See VIT64690 for more on that case.

Grumpy_chap

Yes, @daveyjp , but the OP is not in that, the OP is paid a mileage allowance as per AMAP:

Giblets said:

and claiming 45p for business miles in my own car (I do not receive a car allowance or anything else towards it). I've worked for a few companies, and never before been asked to provide fuel receipts when claiming the 45p/mile 

All the OP's previous employers have been correct.  Seems this employer has got confused between the different approaches.

OP - this thread may be better suited to the Cutting Tax forum?

sheramber

 Are you claiming the mileage allowance from your employer and it is the employer who is asking for receipts?
If so,  It is your employer's policy and nothing to do with HMRC.

Bigphil1474

OP, I work for a local council. We had to start submitting petrol receipts a few years ago(?) so our employer could claim VAT back. Far as I know, they had been claiming it back for years before then, on some sort of assumed amount but apparently HMRC needed them to be able to document it. I've been claiming petrol allowance for 25 years, so not exactly sure when it came in, but it was to do with some change in the rules for employers.

We have been told to simply have a petrol receipt equivalent to about £1 for every 10 miles being claimed. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be your petrol receipt, just any old petrol receipt that pre-dates the beginning of the claim period. I think I've probably used the same one about 3 times in the last year, but nobody noticed. We submit ours electronically, so a photo or scanned copy is used, and I keep the original.

Car_54

The 45p allowance is not for fuel: it is also supposed to compensate (pro-rata) for depreciation, insurance, maintenance and all the other costs of running a car. Does the employer want receipts for all of those too?

I guess the pragmatic approach is that the employer can apply whatever rules he wants to milegae claims. However, it seems the OP wasn't told about this before he incurred the costs, which is unreasonable.

Bigphil1474

CAR_54 - the petrol receipts are for VAT, so the employer can show that VAT has been paid on the fuel that was used for work related travel, and (not 100% sure) they can claim back VAT from HMRC. It would be relative to the number of miles being claimed, but it is not for the purposes of claiming the 45p a mile.