International travel expenses

[Lance]

Employee travel expenses aren’t cost of goods sold. Are you even selling goods, for starters? The cost of reimbursing employee travel costs is an administrative expense. It could come under staff costs or simply travel.

yep.

Travel costs are 'travel'....
Accomodation costs are accomodation.
The fact that the client will allow yourCO to bill them is just another invoice.

Some over-thinking is goin on here. The only factors of relevance are the 24 month rule, and whether it is wholly and exclsuivelt for business.
On the former, it's a temporary place of work...
On the latter, if the client is paying then HMRC are going to look no further.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Employee travel expenses aren’t cost of goods sold. Are you even selling goods, for starters? The cost of reimbursing employee travel costs is an administrative expense. It could come under staff costs or simply travel.

[edison]

How should you capture these reimbursed expenses in your final year accounts?

Hopefully your accountant will help you.

Two of my accountants have advised in the past that these 'expenses' get classified as Cost of Goods sold. However, there seems to be no agreement as one of their colleagues told me something completely different when they became my accountant for a while.

[northernladuk]

How should you capture these reimbursed expenses in your final year accounts?

Hopefully your accountant will help you.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

How should you capture these reimbursed expenses in your final year accounts?

Reimbursed in what way?

Are you talking about paying personally and YourCo reimbursing you? If so like any other employee expense.

If you mean recharging the cost to the client, then this would be recorded as company income.

[lumalist]

1. If the client pays for it, happy days. I see no IR35 implications of this, especially if it works out cheaper for the client this way - it's just a business agreement and its less paperwork.

2. If YourCo pays directly and client is happy to reimburse, you need to invoice them (and charge VAT on top of whatever you agree to charge them). Normally you would invoice them for what it has cost you net of any original VAT (if any) and then charge your VAT on top, but what you actually re-charge is between you and the client. Some people on the flat-rate VAT scheme prefer to re-charge the gross amount (+ VAT) as they cannot recover the input VAT directly. That's also fine but might not be what your client or agency expects (search for previous threads on this, there's no point in re-hashing this here).

3. If you pay and claim the costs from YourCo, the procedure is still the same as number 2 above, except you expense claim the costs from YourCo, who reimburses you, then YourCo re-charges the cost to the client.

Generally I would go with 1 or 2 depending on a) cashflow and b) how prompt the client is at paying.

How should you capture these reimbursed expenses in your final year accounts?

[northernladuk]

1. If the client pays for it, happy days. I see no IR35 implications of this, especially if it works out cheaper for the client this way - it's just a business agreement and its less paperwork.

2. If YourCo pays directly and client is happy to reimburse, you need to invoice them (and charge VAT on top of whatever you agree to charge them). Normally you would invoice them for what it has cost you net of any original VAT (if any) and then charge your VAT on top, but what you actually re-charge is between you and the client. Some people on the flat-rate VAT scheme prefer to re-charge the gross amount (+ VAT) as they cannot recover the input VAT directly. That's also fine but might not be what your client or agency expects (search for previous threads on this, there's no point in re-hashing this here).

3. If you pay and claim the costs from YourCo, the procedure is still the same as number 2 above, except you expense claim the costs from YourCo, who reimburses you, then YourCo re-charges the cost to the client.

Generally I would go with 1 or 2 depending on a) cashflow and b) how prompt the client is at paying.

And I'd prefer 2 over 3 because the person handling my expenses is an incompetent moron.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

1. If the client pays for it, happy days. I see no IR35 implications of this, especially if it works out cheaper for the client this way - it's just a business agreement and its less paperwork.

2. If YourCo pays directly and client is happy to reimburse, you need to invoice them (and charge VAT on top of whatever you agree to charge them). Normally you would invoice them for what it has cost you net of any original VAT (if any) and then charge your VAT on top, but what you actually re-charge is between you and the client. Some people on the flat-rate VAT scheme prefer to re-charge the gross amount (+ VAT) as they cannot recover the input VAT directly. That's also fine but might not be what your client or agency expects (search for previous threads on this, there's no point in re-hashing this here).

3. If you pay and claim the costs from YourCo, the procedure is still the same as number 2 above, except you expense claim the costs from YourCo, who reimburses you, then YourCo re-charges the cost to the client.

Generally I would go with 1 or 2 depending on a) cashflow and b) how prompt the client is at paying.

[jbond007]

I book it myself using my points credit card and then invoice it to the client. This way, I can book my travel separately to the programme manager which is good for my sanity.

Though every few months someone will kick up a storm as to why I'm not booking through their internal system and I've said I'll do it if you can get me into your travel system. Rinse and repeat. It's not that straightforward to get a contractor into the client travel booking system at this particular client. All permie's have employee ID, whereas contractors don't have any employee ID # and the travel booking system can't deal with that.

[northernladuk]

Guess no one reads basic guides anymore so...

Pay for it yourself on the points card and invoice them if you can. If they insist on booking and paying for it then just do that

Minor IR35 point at the very best and if they've made a business choice due to insurances etc and everyone has to use it then it can't be a factor at all.

[Untouchable1]

Hi,

I'll be doing an international trip as part of a client engagement.

What is the IR35 savvy way of doing this? If the client books it for me is this a problem?

Cheers,
Untouchable1