Mixed Purpose Travel
Posted on 4th September 2023 by Joanne Stoneman
Often when we take business trips, we use the opportunity to take in a personal activity. What can we reclaim in respect of expenses?
Often when we take business trips, we use the opportunity to take in a personal activity. What can we reclaim in respect of expenses?
Mileage
For example, we visit a customer’s premises on the way to our office, so travel from home.
One interpretation of the rules suggests that none of the cost of the journey to the office from home is tax deductible because travel between your home and your normal place of work (a commute) counts as a private journey. Alternatively, the travel is two journeys, one from home to the customer and one from the customer to work. The second part meets the condition while the first doesn’t because any journey beginning or ending at home is commuting. It’s quite common in professional practices to claim the shorter of home to the customers, or work to the customer, but that is not always easy.
Because both interpretations have flaws HMRC usually (but not always) accepts that a journey incorporating a business element which starts from or ends at your home meets the condition for a claim/tax deduction.
How about trips away?
We take a holiday to Spain with the family. Whilst on the trip, you take a few days out to visit a customer in Madrid. You have flights and a hotel. What can you claim?
You can certainly claim the flight and hotel to/in Madrid, but the rest of the trip, is personal.
The tip here for multi-purpose trips, is to keep details for the business element and private element of the travel and expenses separate, to avoid confusion and to support the claim, for the business element.