Travel expenses

[rjustice]

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?

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Nobody is going to query it. Personally, I'd limit any claim to what it would normally cost me to get home but if the travel is going to cost you the same anyway then keep the receipt and forget about it.

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

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?

This would be ok in my opinion, assuming you eventually return home and you have not claimed any more than you would had you travelled home directly.

If you travelled elsewhere instead of home, then returned to the temporary workplace, this could be questionable.

I hope this helps.

Martin

[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

[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.

[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.

[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?

[rjustice]

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

[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!

[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".