Business trip flight expenses

[CoolCat]

Don't mix up the difference between a consultancy allowing flights and them claiming the tax back on it. You can pay for anything you want. It's whether you can claim the relief on it which is the question.

I am not confusing anything.

Being handed a fully paid for flight if not a tax allowable expense should be declared as a benefit in kind by the employer. Big consultancies never do this in my experience. The reality is most contractors would be working for an umbrella or their own LTD and based for tax purposes at home in the UK or somewhere else in the UK, their business takes them abroad, and travel back to their home address is normal and not taxed even if you came back every single day. Whether you buy returns starting and ending in the UK, or some returns which start and end at the foreign location have nothing to do with it (I regularly do that as I would do UK Airport A -> foreign location X then foreign location X -> UK location B then UK location B to foreign location X then foreign location X to UK Airport A, its cheaper to do the middle journeys as a return from the foreign location like this if you want or need to fly back to a different UK airport some weekends).

Indeed as a contractor I have often had flights paid for by the end customer, and not even going through the books of my umbrella, or LTD, or my expense claims. Many big corporates do this for their contractors, again if there was any tax due they should be following a whole set of other rules which they don't.

The umbrellas should really get their heads together and push for the same treatment the big consultancies get, in many cases they are little different.

[northernladuk]

The umbrellas should really get their heads together and push for the same treatment the big consultancies get, in many cases they are little different.

But in many more they are fundamentally completely different.