Londoners, contacless on the tube - receipts?

[PerfectStorm]

Nixon Williams told me you could claim whole monthly travelcards - even if you use them for a bit of personal

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

You can claim for any thing that's Wholly Exclusively and Neccessarily business.

There's no reason why you can't claim top ups if that suits your accounting, but there is a possibility - IMV remote, but still there - that HMRC will require you to demonstrate WHN on each journey under the top up. Clearly this is easier if you have a seperate card for business, and if you have journey logs etc.

You could expense top ups and repay private journeys.

So long as you get to the correct end deduction, and it's transparent, no one will worry.

Yes sorry, to be clear I was always under the impression that if you have a dedicated Oyster business card you can just put the top ups through the accounts as long as you can show the Oyster card is only ever used for business.

My understanding was that if you use your own personal Oyster card for both business and personal journeys, claiming each topup could give rise to a BIK as its not wholly, exclusively and necessarily for business purposes - its mixed, therefore you should instead just claim for individual journeys.

I could never be bothered to get a business Oyster so I just used my personal card which has auto-topup and only put in expense claims for individual business journeys, keeping my monthly reports as evidence.

Going forwards I'm just going to be using contact-less payments although HSBC don't appear to offer a business debit card that supports this so I'll have to continue claiming each individual journey I make.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Less good, but still normally acceptable, is a line entry on credit card or bank statement, especially for smaller items and where there is little doubt what the item is.

Good point and statements will show payments to TFL but if they are top-up payments on a personal Oyster card and you're using it for both business and personal journeys wouldn't it still be wise to have journey logs as evidence for your claims? Likewise if you have a dedicated business card, a journey report should be good evidence that it really is only used for business travel.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Nixon Williams told me you could claim whole monthly travelcards - even if you use them for a bit of personal

I think this is true so long as the underlying purpose for the travel card is for business use (i.e. you need it to get to your client's site) and the cost of travel card is less than what it would cost if you paid for each journey individually - in this case any personal usage of the card is treated as incidental.

If on the other hand you visit the client site once or twice a month, a claim for a monthly business card is unlikely to pass the wholly and exclusively test.

[SueEllen]

Nixon Williams told me you could claim whole monthly travelcards - even if you use them for a bit of personal

The personal use is incidental.

If you didn't have travelcard for business purposes, then you would just pay out of your pocket for personal use which you would still do if the journeys are outside the zone boundaries of the travelcard.

However if you don't need the travelcard for business use i.e. it's cheaper to pay for each business journey separately then you shouldn't get one.

[SueEllen]

Here are HMRC links on oyster cards linky and linky and (examples) linky

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

Good point and statements will show payments to TFL but if they are top-up payments on a personal Oyster card and you're using it for both business and personal journeys wouldn't it still be wise to have journey logs as evidence for your claims? Likewise if you have a dedicated business card, a journey report should be good evidence that it really is only used for business travel.

Agree, in a perfect world.

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

Yes sorry, to be clear I was always under the impression that if you have a dedicated Oyster business card you can just put the top ups through the accounts as long as you can show the Oyster card is only ever used for business.

My understanding was that if you use your own personal Oyster card for both business and personal journeys, claiming each topup could give rise to a BIK as its not wholly, exclusively and necessarily for business purposes - its mixed, therefore you should instead just claim for individual journeys.

I could never be bothered to get a business Oyster so I just used my personal card which has auto-topup and only put in expense claims for individual business journeys, keeping my monthly reports as evidence.

Going forwards I'm just going to be using contact-less payments although HSBC don't appear to offer a business debit card that supports this so I'll have to continue claiming each individual journey I make.

Like so many things the BIK is a possibility, but if private journeys were reimbursed it is very unlikely to be taken up. I wouldn't loose sleep over it, the BIK provision exists for anti avoidance.

[PerfectStorm]

One of those occasions when I wonder why I can't claim for my suits, shirts and dry cleaning which are used ONLY for business purposes and I can claim for food and travel. Bonkers...

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

One of those occasions when I wonder why I can't claim for my suits, shirts and dry cleaning which are used ONLY for business purposes and I can claim for food and travel. Bonkers...

Mallalieu v Drummond and duality of purpose. Although many now think Mallalieu v Drummond is bad law.