Different question about business travel - where is home?

[TheFaQQer]

I say it is wherever you lay your wife.

However in my cause it is usually the wives doing the f**king.

So probably home is the divorce courts....

Ah, the various stages of a relationship

- kitchen sex - where you have sex everywhere, including the kitchen
- bedroom sex - where you only ever have sex in the bedroom
- hallway sex - where you walk past each other and mutter "f*** you"
- courtroom sex - where one of you gets screwed in front of everyone else

[CoolCat]

Well re "fly to visit family in the alps" you could decide to hold your companies AGM in the alps, and then travel to and from and hotel in the alps becomes expensable... indeed I know some rather large privately held companies where the directors regularly pull this trick (and I know the tax man is OK)

other stuff depends on common sense, and where you are working. when I was working abroad and flying back to the UK at weekends I would fly into different places in the UK as needed to optimise my social and business calendar, I always booked these to expenses as "the UK" was to all intents and purposes "home" for the purposes of the tax rules, and indeed this is the way the rules are interpreted when I have been in large companies (and I know the tax man was checking this kind of stuff), and whether I was flying into one UK airport or another was incidental and hardly likely something the tax man would be bothered with

[northernladuk]

, and whether I was flying into one UK airport or another was incidental and hardly likely something the tax man would be bothered with

I don't believe that will be the case once he arrives on your door step. I've heard tax investigations can be very thorough and more piss take the find the more thorough it becomes.

Comparing large companies to one man bands doesn't work either really.

[TheFaQQer]

Well re "fly to visit family in the alps" you could decide to hold your companies AGM in the alps, and then travel to and from and hotel in the alps becomes expensable... indeed I know some rather large privately held companies where the directors regularly pull this trick (and I know the tax man is OK)

A private company does not need to have an AGM at all, so it might be difficult to argue that you needed to have one that was overseas - if you have one every year then that might make it easier to argue though.

However, Cannon v Trask showed that company directors must act in good faith when they are going to hold the meeting and it needs to be convenient for all shareholders to attend. So if the shareholders are all already overseas then you could argue that it was convenient to have the meeting there; arguing that it is convenient to fly a shareholder to an overseas place to have a meeting that could have been held anywhere might be difficult.

As ever, it's a matter of your approach to risk.

[CoolCat]

A private company does not need to have an AGM at all, so it might be difficult to argue that you needed to have one that was overseas - if you have one every year then that might make it easier to argue though.

However, Cannon v Trask showed that company directors must act in good faith when they are going to hold the meeting and it needs to be convenient for all shareholders to attend. So if the shareholders are all already overseas then you could argue that it was convenient to have the meeting there; arguing that it is convenient to fly a shareholder to an overseas place to have a meeting that could have been held anywhere might be difficult.

As ever, it's a matter of your approach to risk.

well there are other tricks that people use, as for instance find a relevant industry conference that you attend near the destination you have in mind

[CoolCat]

I don't believe that will be the case once he arrives on your door step. I've heard tax investigations can be very thorough and more piss take the find the more thorough it becomes.

Comparing large companies to one man bands doesn't work either really.

doubt it, as it is such a widespread practise, and is no real financial benefit to the individual as costs of flights are broadly the same

[TheFaQQer]

well there are other tricks that people use, as for instance find a relevant industry conference that you attend near the destination you have in mind

Which would fall foul of HMRC's guidance on expenses - see EIM31960 and specifically the example in EIM31991.

EIM31960 says "The insertion into an itinerary of a token business element, such as a meeting that could equally well have taken place at the employer’s premises in the United Kingdom, does not make the travel cost necessarily incurred"