Claiming partial tax relief for use of season ticket

rizblie · 23 June 2018 at 11:41PM

I am planning to purchase a rail season ticket for work-related travel into London. My job involves a mix of travelling to a main office on some days, as well as travelling to customer premises on other days. My employer will reimburse me for travel to customer premises but is saying I cannot use my season ticket for this and will have to purchase a separate ticket in order to expense it. This seems bonkers to me as in most cases the season ticket would cover a significant portion of travel to the customer premises! If I use my season ticket for part of the journey to a customer premises then is there any way I can claim tax relief for each day that I use my season ticket for this purpose?

BoGoF · 23 June 2018 at 11:50PM

Nope....you can only claim the actual cost of business travel and if your normal season ticket covers this then your cost is nil. You bought the season ticket for commuting to work.

If your employer is going to reimburse you 100% of your business travel if you purchase tickets what is the problem?

tebthereb · 24 June 2018 at 7:59AM

I suppose the problem is that his season ticket is not going to be used for ordinary commuting as much as planned, so the cost of each of these journeys is going to be relatively high. Plus, having two tickets is not cost efficient overall. So he wants to reduce his costs where he can.

Personally I would be looking at the costs and, if it makes sense to, perhaps returning my existing ticket for a partial refund (not sure if this is possible, seem to vaguely recall it is), and possibly asking my employer to provide a new ticket. You would then fall within this:

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim16066

Treatment will then depend on how the ticket will actually be used; i.e if provided mainly for your ordinary commute or for the other journeys.

If there is a business case for the company providing a ticket to cover everything then I don!!!8217;t see why they would object but that is between you and them.

Otherwise a deduction looks difficult; where you have incurred the cost they won!!!8217;t like you deducting a portion of the season ticket cost or the cost of buying a single ticket. I suspect this is what the previous respondent refers to.

rizblie · 25 June 2018 at 7:07PM

Thanks for the responses. Yes the issue is that the more I travel to customer premises, the less attractive a season ticket becomes for ordinary commuting - but I don't have an accurate forecast of how much travel will be to customers vs commuting. So I don't know in advance whether having a season ticket is good value or not e.g. I might be better off with a carnet of tickets (with a smaller discount) for commuting if I am not going to use my season ticket that often. Note the reason this is a concern for me is that the annual season ticket cost is a hefty £7,000.

A season ticket is definitely worth having if I can use it for both commuting and business travel, and still be able to claim the portion used for business travel. If my employer can't reimburse me for business travel on this basis, then claiming deductions pro rata for the business travel portion might still make it a viable option for me... which is why I asked the question.

Based on the responses received it looks like I might be in a better position if the employer bought the ticket for me, and I then used it for both private and business travel as set out in the HMRC manual.

Thanks!

jimmo · 26 June 2018 at 10:42PM

As your annual season ticket costs £7,000 I imagine your home is some miles from London which leads to the question of whether your journeys from home to customer premises will be significantly different to your normal commuting journey.
The following may be worth a read.
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim32300

Claiming partial tax relief for use of season ticket

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