Scale rate expenses payments: employee travelling outside UK

[Liokault]

Not sure if this goes here or in Jobs and Employment, but here goes.


I’m a contractor, I work with lots of other contractors, we all have our own accountants, everyone is being given either a different answer/guidance or none at all to this question:

We work in the UK but spend quite a lot of time traveling abroad. We get a day rate (v poor) to cover meals etc, and a crap capped hotel rate.

On the HMRC web site, they allow (or do they?) a much higher subsistence rate and a much higher hotel allowance. I'm reading it as a set figure that is paid depending on location and is un-receipted ......or am I wrong and is that a max limit that you can claim up to with receipts? All of the literature on the HMRC site just implies that it’s a fixed day rate.



Example, I stay in Munich for 24 hours, HMRC allow €147 (room rate) + €79.5 subsistence...can I pay myself €226.5 if I do not have receipts to that amount?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/scale-r...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...

[LC23]

They are scale rate payments for employers to pay their employees when working on business trips/at a temporary workplace. So the employer can pay up to the amounts without there being a taxable benefit. Or they can choose to reimburse for actual costs based on receipts.

[Ozzie Osmond]

Liokault said:

We get a day rate (v poor) to cover meals etc, and a crap capped hotel rate.

LC23 said:

They are scale rate payments ... So the employer can pay up to the amounts without there being a taxable benefit. Or they can choose to reimburse for actual costs based on receipts.

Sounds as though this is one to raise with your employer rather than a tax problem.