Reply to: Travel expenses

[Contreras]

What are you wishing to claim? Mileage, or something like rail/bus/coach travel?

If mileage then assuming it was a one off I'd just book the normal route. What Hector doesn't know won't hurt him.

If rail/bus/coach then I would ask on here.

[Bellona]

I don't know the facts of the OP's case but I don't think it's always going to be a strict no go.

For example if you lived in Newcastle and travelled to/from London each week and on the Friday you decided to travel back to a friend's a few miles away from your home rather than directly to your home, then strictly speaking this would be a private journey according to the manual, but it would be unreasonable for HMRC to disallow the journey.

+1
And why would they question it if, as in the example above, the expense sheet read something like " Return journey from client site", which was what the journey was normally described as ( assuming you keep expense claim sheets to bundle up your expense receipts), and the cost was the same .

Much ado about an unlikely drill down IMHO

[SteelyDan]

Hello,

I will soon be travelling to a client location on a Monday, staying there through the week and return home on a Friday. I will cover my own expenses. My home is my registered office.

If I were to travel to another location other than home on a Friday for the same cost as travelling home then can I still claim the travelling costs as an expense?

What are you wishing to claim? Mileage, or something like rail/bus/coach travel?

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

On what grounds can you argue that HMRC are unreasonable? Are there any handy references where this has been shown to be a winner? Many, many things that HMRC do are unreasonable to many, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'd win at tribunal.

On the grounds the journey is practically the same and the private element of the journey is merely incidental to the journey home - My view is not that you would need to aregue the toss with them, it is that they wouldn't care less in the first place in an example like that.

[TheFaQQer]

I don't know the facts of the OP's case but I don't think it's always going to be a strict no go.

For example if you lived in Newcastle and travelled to/from London each week and on the Friday you decided to travel back to a friend's a few miles away from your home rather than directly to your home, then strictly speaking this would be a private journey according to the manual, but it would be unreasonable for HMRC to disallow the journey.

On what grounds can you argue that HMRC are unreasonable? Are there any handy references where this has been shown to be a winner? Many, many things that HMRC do are unreasonable to many, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'd win at tribunal.

[TheFaQQer]

Because I don't see how returning from the temporary workplace to one location in this scenario is any different to returning home, given the cost of the journey is the same; the journey from the temporary workplace to wherever he happens to be going should be treated just like any other return journey as long as its not excessively different (and in this case the cost is the same). Obviously the onwards journey to home would not be claimable as its wholly private.

Without knowing exactly what the OP has planned, it becomes hard to argue categorically one way or the other.

My journey to my temporary place of work costs £50, for example. If I take a completely different journey to go somewhere else (eg. I go away for the weekend), should I claim £50 because that's what it would normally cost me? Does it make a difference if I go from work to a new place to home, or if I went from workplace to somewhere else and back to workplace?

The way I read the original post was that there was no intention to go home on certain weekends, just to claim the travel anyway. In that case, this is a private journey which shouldn't be claimed.

More to the point, in a hypothetical inspection you have to ask yourself whether it would even be raised and its hard to see why it would be. For starters, any travel payments give rise to a possible tax charge unless an equivalent claim is made on your SA. Therefore its only likely to come up during a check of your SA, not your expense payments. Secondly, if an inspector is looking at your receipts/travel logs and sees a return journey that is identical in cost to all of your other return journeys, what are they going to say? Who says you even need to keep a log of where you returned to...just put it in your log as "Return journey from temporary workplace".

If your argument is "they are unlikely to find out", then why stop there? You may get more money out of the company pretending that you did the mileage but stayed at a friend's house - HMRC are unlikely to find out, so why not claim it?

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

For example if you lived in Newcastle and travelled to/from London each week and on the Friday you decided to travel back to a friend's a few miles away from your home rather than directly to your home, then strictly speaking this would be a private journey according to the manual, but it would be unreasonable for HMRC to disallow the journey.

Especially as it means your saving less tax by claiming for a shorter journey!

Which re-enforces my point...I don't think HMRC are going to care about something like this unless your claim resulted in significant extra tax saved...for example if you flipped your example where OP lives in London, but decides to travel to their friend in Newcastle instead of home on the Friday, then HMRC may well question it.

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

I don't know the facts of the OP's case but I don't think it's always going to be a strict no go.

For example if you lived in Newcastle and travelled to/from London each week and on the Friday you decided to travel back to a friend's a few miles away from your home rather than directly to your home, then strictly speaking this would be a private journey according to the manual, but it would be unreasonable for HMRC to disallow the journey.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

So why doesn't 3.31 or 3.32 apply for private travel?

Because I don't see how returning from the temporary workplace to one location in this scenario is any different to returning home, given the cost of the journey is the same; the journey from the temporary workplace to wherever he happens to be going should be treated just like any other return journey as long as its not excessively different (and in this case the cost is the same). Obviously the onwards journey to home would not be claimable as its wholly private.

More to the point, in a hypothetical inspection you have to ask yourself whether it would even be raised and its hard to see why it would be. For starters, any travel payments give rise to a possible tax charge unless an equivalent claim is made on your SA. Therefore its only likely to come up during a check of your SA, not your expense payments. Secondly, if an inspector is looking at your receipts/travel logs and sees a return journey that is identical in cost to all of your other return journeys, what are they going to say? Who says you even need to keep a log of where you returned to...just put it in your log as "Return journey from temporary workplace".

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

The qualified accountant has said that in this is questionable. I am of a conservative nature so I’ll not risk it.

He said it was questionable if you were travelling from the workplace to somewhere else, then back again, implying a private journey. Unless I misunderstood you that's not what you're doing, but its your choice!

[rjustice]

The qualified accountant has said that in this is questionable. I am of a conservative nature so I’ll not risk it.

[TheFaQQer]

You've had two people say that it would probably be fine, one of whom is a qualified accountant.

Personally I'd claim it and not worry about the BIK at all.

So why doesn't 3.31 or 3.32 apply for private travel?

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Ok, it is likely that I will not be travelling back to my office before returning to the client location and it doesn’t seem worth the trouble going down the BIK so I’ll just pay for it myself.

Thanks for your help.

You've had two people say that it would probably be fine, one of whom is a qualified accountant.

Personally I'd claim it and not worry about the BIK at all.

[rjustice]

Ok, it is likely that I will not be travelling back to my office before returning to the client location and it doesn’t seem worth the trouble going down the BIK so I’ll just pay for it myself.

Thanks for your help.

[TheFaQQer]

If I were to travel to another location other than home on a Friday for the same cost as travelling home then can I still claim the travelling costs as an expense?

Yes - you can claim whatever you want, as long as it's in line with your company's expenses policy.

A more pertinent question would be "can I claim the travelling costs as an expense without incurring a BIK?", to which the answer is a resounding no.

Section 3.31 and 3.32 of HMRC document 490: Employee travel - a tax and National Insurance contributions guide (linky) make this clear:

3.31 There is no relief for journeys which are private travel.
Private travel is a journey between:
• an employee’s home and any other place he or she does not have to be for work purposes, or
• any two places an employee does not have to be for work purposes.

3.32 There is no relief for travel that is made for private rather than for work purposes, even if it is to or from a workplace which, in other circumstances, would be a temporary workplace.

So, your options are:

• Claim it as an expense which doesn't incur a BIK and hope that there isn't an investigation you can't defend.
• Claim it and declare the BIK and pay the appropriate tax and NI
• Don't claim it because it isn't a valid business expense for tax purposes