Mileage between home, office and sites - grey area?

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

My next gig allows me to invoice the agency for business mileage between the client's main office and their other sites, which I expect to travel to frequently

... snip..

At what point along that journey am I doing business mileage?

I think its really a contract issue between agent and yourself rather than a tax or accounting one.

[malvolio]

You are getting confused I suspect. You don't claim expenses from ClientCo, YourCo does. So for example:

YourCo Office (home maybe) -> Main ClientCo site = 40 miles.
YourCo Office -> ClientCo site B = 60 miles.

If you go to site B instead of the main office you invoice ClientCo for 20 miles. You personally then expense 60 miles from YourCo.

IMO

Alternatively, as can happen, your day rate does not include the costs of travel to the usual workplace. In which case....

All your personal business mileage is claimed from Yourco at HMRC scale rates as normal. All expenses for travel are chargeable to the end client and you charge them all business miles at an agreed rate.

So to quote that bloke from up north, among many others, what does your contract say?

[b0redom]

You are getting confused I suspect. You don't claim expenses from ClientCo, YourCo does. So for example:

YourCo Office (home maybe) -> Main ClientCo site = 40 miles.
YourCo Office -> ClientCo site B = 60 miles.

If you go to site B instead of the main office you invoice ClientCo for 20 miles. You personally then expense 60 miles from YourCo.

IMO

[magicbuttons]

My next gig allows me to invoice the agency for business mileage between the client's main office and their other sites, which I expect to travel to frequently.

I appreciate the difference between personal expenses (home to temporary office), which I can claim through my own ltd co, and business expenses (office to client sites), but there seems to be a grey area where I travel from home to a site without visiting the office first, especially where that site is further away. I've tried searching to no avail.

For example, say the temporary office is 50 miles from home, and the other site is 40 miles from that office. This totals 90 miles. However, the trip directly to the site might actually be only 75 miles from home: 25 miles further than the personal claimable home-to-office expense, and 15 miles less than the 40 miles that would have been claimable as a business office-to-site expense, had I visited the office.

At what point along that journey am I doing business mileage?

It would obviously be daft to drive out of my way to visit the office for no reason, so do I:

a) claim the 50 miles from home to office through my ltd even though I actually went in a different direction and didn't really go there, then claim just the extra 25 miles from the agency;
b) claim the 40 miles from the office to the site from the agency, even though I wasn't at the office to begin with, and claim the other 35 through my ltd;
c) brush up on my Pythagoras and split the difference? ; or
d) stop overthinking it and do something obvious that I've missed?