work expenses - tight or right aibu?

[NotMyDust]

I need to travel in to another town weekly for work. I'd need to use the train rather than drive but it's only a few stops further on from where the office is. OTOH I live about 1 hour away, twice the price.

They say I can't claim the train fare from home as its not my regular place of work, but I'd only be entitled to the train fare from where the office is.

Does this seem tight to anyone or is it normal and I've just had it really easy till now?

YABU = suck it up and stop being so entitled
YANABU = it's reasonable expenses and should be expensable.

It’s not about being tight it’s HMRC guidance around what is and isn’t a legitimate business expense.

They’re right, that’s how it works.

That makes sense to me; I can only claim mileage from the office to places I go rather than from home

Your normal commute is your choice. The additional bit is their choice.

HMRC rules. You could split ticket though.

wow I've never had that I feel silly now. it's gonna cost me loads! wasn't part of jd explicitly originally

Yep reasonable, sorry. No one claims exes to get to their normal place of work (I wish! Eyes up 50-mile round trip commute)

This is how it works, wherever is your regular place of work if u have to travel further to a different place it’s the distance from your usual place of work to the new place….or else it’s like saying everyone should be paid for their travel to and from work and home all the time

Why will it cost you any more than it does atm tho op? Can you not drive as normal then catch train from office?

It would o let count if you had to travel from your work base to anywhere for business. Home to work and work to home never count

You can claim for the ticket from your office onwards, though.

HMRC don't allow your employer to pay fro travel to your normal place of work.
They will allow your employer to pay for travel costs from your normal place of work to the other location, if it's further away.

The only exception might be if you had to move equipment, eg picking up IT equipment from your office to take to another office, but not if the you have to pass the first office to get to the second office!

That’s normal, most work expense policies specifically say they will reimburse travel beyond travel between home and work. They should reimburse the difference between the train to the extra stop, and to the office

Normal. We can only claim any excess compared to our normal journey from home to base.

It’s nothing to do with being “tight”, only certain expenses are actually able to be claimed for based on HMRC.

Sounds standard, they’d only pay what’s above your usual commute. You should be able to buy your usual ticket/do your usual commute though and then expense the office to different places of work ticket.

This has always been the case for civil service. You pay to get to work. Then you can claim on necessary travel from workplace to site visit and back to office. Then you pay to go home again.

Err hang on - it shouldn't cost you more...

Are you saying that you usually drive to your "main" office, which is cheaper than the train fare.

But to get to the "visiting" office, you need to get the train - can't drive it; so rather than drive to "main" office then get train, you plan to get the train all the way? And that's why it's more expensive?

But yes - you can't claim for travel to your "main" office, only for anything additional. If you are getting a train that costs £50, whereas it usually costs you £10 to drive to your "main" office, the system allows you to do that - that's how we do it where I work, the "regular commute" is personal expenses and I get the "excess" not the full amount.

HR here, that's standard.

It’s very normal, yet still annoying. I work from home yet my office is based 200 miles away. If I got the train there I’d have to pay because it’s my choice to live 200 miles away. I could only claim the 50 miles between my ‘base’ office and our other office. Luckily I haven’t been into the office since March 2020 so it’s a moot point really.

Why can’t you drive and then claim the mileage from your normal office to the other office?

Or drive to the station near the normal office and get the (expensed) train from there?

It's tight, yes, but it's also the standard way of doing it unfortunately. It's annoying.

Normal. I have to go to Scotland next week, live in SE. They pay London onwards but I still pay the home to London piece.

That’s how our expense policy works too

I once managed to argue successfully against that only because my office was in a completely different direction to the other site. Also because I had to travel peak to get to location two whereas I could travel off peak to get to my main base (different work hours). I argued that I couldn’t go off peak to first my office, then travel on to the second place and still be on time.

Both places were in London so they wanted to pay out just the tube cost between the 2 locations but I lived in the Home Counties then and needed to pay overground costs.

I did still have to subtract my standard off peak journey cost from the office, off the peak ticket I was having to buy for location 2. But at least it meant I didn’t lose out. But it was a lot of hassle! If your place is just a few stops further than your office I don’t see you can do anything about it.