Travelling & subsistence & HMRC!

[ratewhore]

The nature of the driving trade, which is dominated by the major supermarkets, is that work is only offered by end user clients on a day to day basis so each assignment is for one day only, but can be extended.

I think this is what you need to home in on before panicking or hypothecating...

[TheMonkey]

Just got a different way each day otherwise the HMRC thought police cameras will know you go to the same place every day........

They'll be saying that because I work from home a lot, I'm not allowed to work on the kitchen table for more than a week because that constitutes a permanent place of work.

Unfortunately the desktop won't fit in the bathroom.

[xoggoth]

As fare as contractors go, how can they argue against their own advice in booklet 490? It contains specific example of contractors. I suspect this is a rather narrower circumstance. Agency workers have never been able to claim travel expenses.

[dmini]

HMRC are starting to challenge travelling payments to temporary places of employment- by the looks of this article - making each temporary place a permanent one for that contract!

Quoted off accountingweb


Travel to work

Worker operates as a one-man service company which obtains short term driving assignments via an agency. The nature of the driving trade, which is dominated by the major supermarkets, is that work is only offered by end user clients on a day to day basis so each assignment is for one day only, but can be extended.

The workers company usually has several different end user clients every month and sometimes there is no work available. Work patterns are not predicatable. There has been no IR35 realted challenge.

Relief has been claimed for travel between the worker's home and the end user client's depot, on the basis that the worker is a permanenet employee of his own company and also has a temporary place of work.

HMRC have put forward an argument that each an every assignment represents a separte employment and therefore no relief is available. It is countered that the worker is permanently employed by his own company and there is no break in employment. HMRC do not dispute that the worker is employed by his own company but argue that this employment ceases at the end of each assignement (i.e every day) and restarts the next day when a new assignment is obtained. This would mean that the workplace would always be permanent although only for the duration of one day.

Hopefully they will lose this, or the implications are nasty

Unless someone can see something I have missed


Edited to add in details rather than url!