Business mileage etiquette

[vrsmxtb]

Ok my company has very vague guidelines over claiming business mileage payments in terms of what you measure and from where and I can't get a clear answer from anyone.

I am currently on a secondment which involves me travelling to various sites all over London and the South. I pick up my mileage from the base site I was based in before the secondment. My mileage is all claimed from this base store, unless I am in a hotel for the week.

I'm fairly certain I should be deducting my weekly pre-secondment normal commute from my mileage claim, even though I'm not actually starting or finishing my journey at my base. But if I do the mileage from the base site to the visited site this effectively takes into account the commute, it's just a bonus if my home is closer to the visited site than the base site.

Any ideas on the standards of what is acceptable?

[dave7692]

The way it works for me is as soon as I get in the car to go to site I'm on business miles even if I would normally be commuting anyway.

For example if I went to a site 30 miles away straight from home, I'd charge the full 30 not subtract 15 miles because I'd have been commuting it anyway.

[sparkyhx]

ours you deduct your normal Home to Office commute. I've been into our office 3 times in the last year.

[RizzoTheRat]

We deduct the home-office commute, which for me is an 9 miles each way, so if working at a site closer than that I wouldn't bother putting anything in.

[Limpet]

I've always been allowed to claim the mileage for the entire trip for any destination that isn't my "base" office. That can be a customer site or an alternative office to my normal place of work. I've never had to deduct my normal commute mileage, and even if the trip takes me right past the base office car park, it doesn't matter.

The same rules apply across my last three employers.