Travel expenses - accountant seems useless

[jmo21]

There are a number of circumstances where travel costs would not be reclaimable:

* You're a permie and your travel is considered ordinary commuting to a permanent workplace.
* You work for an umbrella and perform a single assignment, making your client office a permanent workplace.
* You work for an umbrella for a number of assignments but due to the rules around "supervision, direction or control" you are unable to reclaim travel expenses.
* You work for your own Ltd and are operating under IR35
* You work for your own Ltd and are operating outside IR35, work on-site at least 40% of the time andyour current contract has exceeded (or you expect it to exceed) 24 months.



Conversely, there are scenarios where you can legitimately claim travel expenses as a contractor:

* You work for an umbrella over multiple assignments and are not caught by the "supervision, direction or control" rules.
* You work for your own Ltd and are operating outside IR35 and are not caught by the 40%/24 month rule for travel to a temporary workplace.
* You work for your own Ltd outside of IR35 and are travelling for some other business purpose besides working on-site.

All true, but I think the OP simply doesn't understand that he (or rather his company) effectively saves 19% of the value of his total expenses due to them being offset against corp tax.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

All true, but I think the OP simply doesn't understand that he (or rather his company) effectively saves 19% of the value of his total expenses due to them being offset against corp tax.

I was responding to Cirrus rather than OP but yes I agree it sounds like OP doesn’t quite understand what it means to “claim expenses”.

[mudskipper]

I recall a lot of whingeing on IPSE about no longer being able to claim travel.

Also a friend of mine was recently a permie with a very large organisation, FootsieCo. His workplace was London but because he had teams in both London and Edinburgh, he had to spend 2-3 days per week in Edinburgh.

FootsieCo suddenly sent him a large amount of money. When he asked why, they said it was to compensate him. They had put all of his air fares and hotels on his P11D so he was facing a massive tax bill. Apparently this was part of a wider discussion they'd had with the Revenue.

Nobody seems to be supporting me but I remain sceptical that contractors can now legitimately claim travel from home to client except maybe if they only go on rare occasions.

Maybe you are recalling a couple of years back when the new rules were introduced for Umbrellas - the test was "SDC" and at the time it was proposed that the same test would be applied to a ltdCo contractor. IPSE and others successfully argued that the test for LtdCo contractors should be whether they were caught by IR35, so if you are a ltdCo contractor, outside IR35, travel to your temporary workplace is deductible subject to the 24 month rule.

I had a friend in a similar situation to your friend, and the problem was the 24 month rule.

[Paralytic]

* You work for an umbrella over multiple assignments and are not caught by the "supervision, direction or control" rules.

I've never seen this before (have never been via Umbrella). Can you clarify? So if you're via an Umbrella but not under SDC, you can still claim expenses? How does that work and does it actually provide any savings? eg, does it reduce tax/NI in the Umbrella calculations?

[ladymuck]

I've never seen this before (have never been via Umbrella). Can you clarify? So if you're via an Umbrella but not under SDC, you can still claim expenses? How does that work and does it actually provide any savings? eg, does it reduce tax/NI in the Umbrella calculations?

When I last used an umbrella, I would fill in an expenses sheet with receipts and that would be shown on my payslip as an in and out transaction but they would be pre-tax deduction, post-tax addition (or some such, the terminology escapes me). So, you would effectly not have any extra cash in your pocket but you didn't pay tax on that portion of your day rate.

[Paralytic]

When I last used an umbrella, I would fill in an expenses sheet with receipts and that would be shown on my payslip as an in and out transaction but they would be pre-tax deduction, post-tax addition (or some such, the terminology escapes me). So, you would effectly not have any extra cash in your pocket but you didn't pay tax on that portion of your day rate.

What sort of expenses were these?

[GhostofTarbera]

What sort of expenses were these?

And what umbrella as none seem to offer expenses since Crystal umbrella and they went bust


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[ladymuck]

What sort of expenses were these?

Travel BUT this was in the before time when such things were allowed. Nowadays this is no longer possible.

[Paralytic]

Travel BUT this was in the before time when such things were allowed. Nowadays this is no longer possible.

Ok, so the question to TheCyclingProgrammer still stands. Can you reclaim travel expenses if:

"You work for an umbrella over multiple assignments and are not caught by the "supervision, direction or control" rules."

And if so, what is the mechanism by which this is done?

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I've never seen this before (have never been via Umbrella). Can you clarify? So if you're via an Umbrella but not under SDC, you can still claim expenses? How does that work and does it actually provide any savings? eg, does it reduce tax/NI in the Umbrella calculations?

If you're with an umbrella, are engaged on multiple assignments (so each client site can qualify as a temporary workplace) and you are not caught by the SDC rule, then you can "claim" expenses. With a brolly, all that really means is that your net pay after umbrella fees gets carved up into "expenses" (not taxable if they are legitimate tax-deductible expenses) and "salary" (subject to PAYE as usual).

So if your day rate is £500, the brolly charges £20/day admin fees and you claim £30 in travel expenses, you will receive a reimbursement of £30 tax free for your expenses (taken out of the £480 left after brolly fees) and the remaining £450 will be income subject to PAYE.