Country lunches
Discussion
Quickie on claiming the cost of 'team' lunches.
About once every 10 days, 2 out of the 3 of us who work for our VSE (the third is a teleworker) leave the office for lunch at a country cafe, away from ringing phones and the work laying around in piles waiting to be done. We review work that is going on and plan what is up coming and how it will be handled. We pay about £15 for the two of us.
I am now thinking that perhaps this is an allowable expense? I could say that we use lunchtime simply to avoid wasting time during proper work hours, but in fact we just need to get away from the office for an hour or so once in a while to clear our heads and see things a bit more clearly, and it is cheaper to eat lunch than rent a meeting room for the hour.
Allowable expense?
PS Did anyone see the Armstrongs last night? I do hope they don't try and claim the Las Vegas tip was wholly business when they got remarried while they were there and drank champagne in the bath. They did a similar thing with the Frenchj trip a few weeks ago, went to try and tout business in France (badly) but happended also to buy a house while they were there, and hire an interpreter for that.
Subsistence costs are allowed if they are "incurred wholly and exclusively for the purpose of the trade". Staff breakfasts and lunches are probably OK provided they are not excessive and are reasonable in the size of each claim.
VAT may be reclaimable on such costs provided the venue is over 5 miles from the place of your business (that is the usual rule of thumb distance applied by the VAT aurhorities for subsistence claims).
VAT may be reclaimable on such costs provided the venue is over 5 miles from the place of your business (that is the usual rule of thumb distance applied by the VAT aurhorities for subsistence claims).
Depends on the circumstances. If you actually already doing work over 5 miles away and used a local pub for lunch then there would be no problem naking a claim. Obviously, deliberately making a special journey just to go over the 5 mile "exclusion zone" would be seen as "taking the proverbial" and rightly disallowed.
in 30 years of preparing accounts, tax and VAT returns I have NEVER seen anyone doing this anyway. Even for tax frudsters there are limits to the efforts they might make.
The 5 mile limit is a "VAT" thing and not normally considred by Income Tax or Corporation Tax inspectors.
in 30 years of preparing accounts, tax and VAT returns I have NEVER seen anyone doing this anyway. Even for tax frudsters there are limits to the efforts they might make.
The 5 mile limit is a "VAT" thing and not normally considred by Income Tax or Corporation Tax inspectors.
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