Meals - do you claim them?

[Wanderer]

I claim for meals taken while away from home (with an eye on the 24 month rule). I also claim for breakfast if I buy one away from home because of an early start and for dinner if it's a long day and I buy something to eat before I get home.

[psychocandy]

I never used to but my new accountant - Nixon Williams has advised me its Ok.

[THEPUMA]

Every penny counts.

I presently have a round trip of 6 miles to site. I charge £2.40 per day for that as well as an average if £5 per day subsistence. Couple that with a home office where I work, sometimes just in the morning before going to work (£75 per month). My mobile phone £50 pet month. Stationary, printer paper, ink, any software and computer equipment as well as travel for interviews or conferences I may attend and my broadband, plus any business calls I make on my home phone then all of a sudden you're looking at 5k per year(ish) in expenses of which I can claim VAT and which reduce my corporation tax and make it
worth having an accountant.

Do that over the last 14 years and
I'll let you do the maths.

Every penny indeed.

If you want to claim every penny, I reckon you should increase your mileage claim to £2.70 (45ppm).

On an aside, you mention reclaiming input VAT. Presumably you have done the sums and the flat rate scheme isn't worthwhile for you?

[MCC7]

Having recently set up my limited the timing of this thread is impeccible.

I have been wrestling with whether I should claim lunch or not. My view is that if I can claim through an umbrella, then why not as a limited?

Either way, the fact that there is no concensous on a site where the greatest minds are being paid huge day rates (that's true right?), demonstrates that HMRC are as ever, clear as mud with their "rules".

It's all interpretation.

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Following on from the in this thread - do you claim for lunch when on contract?

I do - my view is that if I am in my permanent workplace (home office) I eat food I've made myself. If on client's site, I need to buy lunch, so it's claimable.

But if you are not at home you will not need to buy food for your lunch and will buy out instead so where is the additional cost?

[psychocandy]

Regardless if your client's site is 5 or 500 miles away?

Either way unless your going back home to eat then its costing you more than it would surely?

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

Either way unless your going back home to eat then its costing you more than it would surely?

Why? At the end of the day you have the option to take sandwiches to work

[SueEllen]

But if you are not at home you will not need to buy food for your lunch and will buy out instead so where is the additional cost?

The additional cost comes down to where you are.

If you are in a middle of an industrial estate where there aren't kitchen facilities, and you cannot bring food from home then it would be fair to claim for it as the limited catering facilities do over charge for their food.

[Clare@InTouch]

But if you are not at home you will not need to buy food for your lunch and will buy out instead so where is the additional cost?

If I'm at home I can have a can of beans and a bread roll. If I'm on a client site and the only option is the canteen then the extra cost is the value of the sarnie I've had to buy. Potentially reduced by the 35p I've saved by not eating a can of beans.

There would be no additional cost if HMRC allowed you to claim the proportionate cost of your weekly shopping, but they specifically don't.

Example 2
An employee who has to make a business journey takes a packed lunch that he has prepared from items purchased as part of his weekly supermarket shop. The cost of the packed lunch (even if it could be precisely identified) is not an expense incurred in the course of the journey and so is not attributable to the travel for the purpose of Sections 337 and 338.

Travel expenses: general: accommodation and subsistence: subsistence costs that are not attributable to the travel: examples

[Scrag Meister]

Where is the "Not any more" option.

I did when I was commuting from Devon to London and lodging in London weekdays.

Since the 2 year rule kicked in and I have now bought a place in London, even having moved contracts twice within London, I haven't claimed any since 2009.