Fuel Mileage Query

[alfa145uk]

I use my private car for work travel and don't receive a car expense, so my employer pays me at 45p per mile when I travel to a customer site. However for the purpose of claiming back my mileage expenses they always use the office address to the customer address to calculate the mileage and amount owed.

Depending on if the customer is the nearside or far side of the office I either win or lose as appropriate. It seems strange doing it this way, but when I questioned it it was obvious they wouldn't change the calculation.

2 scenarios have arisen which I am unsure of:

1 - As I have been doing a lot of travel which would put me out of pocket (i.e. the customer site is nearer the office than it is to my home) and I have been there a lot, my mileage expense received is lower than the actual mileage traveled.

2 - I have been getting the train to London where my train tickets are claimed back, but not the mileage from home to the station. As this is the opposite direction to the office and amounts to 10 miles a day, the company won't pay this mileage back.

Should I be making a claim for the mileage for 1 & 2 in my Self Assessment as they are mileage where no expense has been paid and they have been purely incurred for travel to work which is not my permanent office address where I am based?

Thanks all

[bogie]

you always have to take your normal home to base off before you claim an expense, so cant claim any more , thats just how it is

if you go to the customer, then the office, then another customer etc, you just add up the total mileage and take off the usual home to base and claim the remainder

[Sir Bagalot]

Assuming London is your normal place of work, so you can't claim this part. If you travel elsewhere then your employer is entitled to pay you your mileage less train fare (into London) less mileage that you would of driven to train station.

However, the problem occurs when you have an annual train ticket and have therefore have already paid for this part of the journey, therefore they could only really deduct your mileage to the train station from your claim. They should be paying you the mileage from your home address and not the office. Sounds like you have a PITA finance director.

[Deva Link]

alfa145uk said:

Should I be making a claim for the mileage for 1 & 2 in my Self Assessment as they are mileage where no expense has been paid and they have been purely incurred for travel to work which is not my permanent office address where I am based?

Yes. HMRC allow you claim for the whole journey from home. You can even call in at your office as long as the stop in incidental to the journey (ie to pick up docs etc).

[Deva Link]

bogie said:

you always have to take your normal home to base off before you claim an expense, so cant claim any more , thats just how it is

if you go to the customer, then the office, then another customer etc, you just add up the total mileage and take off the usual home to base and claim the remainder

For the purposes of claiming off your employer, it doesn't have to be done like that - it depends on the rules they set. My last employer didn't do this.

What many people do, which is dodgy obviously, is to claim they always travel from and back to their base office.

[alfa145uk]

My normal place of work isn't London (it is outside of London) and I drive there when I am in the office.

When I am in London I get the train but can't claim back mileage to and from the train station. So 10 miles a day, 5 days a week for a month equals 250 miles I have incurred for work but not eligible to claim back - I presume this goes on the Self Assessment?

[Deva Link]

alfa145uk said:

- I presume this goes on the Self Assessment?

HMRC form P87.

[alfa145uk]

Deva Link said:

For the purposes of claiming off your employer, it doesn't have to be done like that - it depends on the rules they set. My last employer didn't do this.

What many people do, which is dodgy obviously, is to claim they always travel from and back to their base office.

That is how my current company want it done - all mileage calculations are from the office to the customer, even if I am at a customer's all day and travel from home to the opposite direction to the office which results in over claiming the mileage compared to what I have actually driven. If the customer is further than the office but in the same direction I am under claiming.

So at the end of the year if I find I have claimed back less miles than I have driven, I presume I can claim the difference?

This seems odd, in previous companies I have just claimed the total miles driven when travelling to site.

[Deva Link]

alfa145uk said:

So at the end of the year if I find I have claimed back less miles than I have driven, I presume I can claim the difference?

You show the total mileage on the P87 multiplied by the HMRC rates and then you deduct the amount the company paid you. You get tax relief on the difference.