£30 - surely no longer enough for work expenses and Xmas party!

[Thursday5pmisginoclock]

For those in corporate roles where you can claim expenses…what are you company policy amounts for an evening meal when working away? Our £30 allowance feels so mean, and it’s the same amount for Christmas party! I mean what do you get for that nowadays??? Especially if we were to meet in London?

also why is the personal car payment still £0.45ppm - I am pretty sure it was that 10 maybe even 15/20 years ago!

inflation has not caught up surely…?

Is this commonplace?

I don’t understand why you’d struggle to get an evening meal for 1 for £30 even in London. How many courses are you having? £30 is our Christmas limit but I’m in the north so Christmas may be different. But £30 for a meal and a drink is fine in my opinion.

It's more than we get!

The 45p though is set by HMRC, if companies pay more than that, you'll pay tax on the extra

Yes that is the rules! I'm lucky enough to have a company car so get 12p per business mile - car does around 300 miles per tank so I get £36 for a journey that costs me nearer £60 in fuel! Luckily its a PHEV and I rarely use petrol for my personal journeys (electric to work, plug in, electric home, plug in overnight) which makes the above more bearable.

£30 is more than adequate for 1 dinner.

£30 for an evening meal sounds plenty to me. I've never had an individual amount for an xmas party, that's usually been organised centrally and I'd assume restaurants do deals for large group bookings with a menu catered to the budget.

£22.50 here and a stupid number of rules about what qualifies eg can't buy a bag of salad and a rotisserie chicken portion, must be a sit down chicken and salad meal or something kind kfc

£30 is what we also get. It’s always good enough for me though people who have lots of drinks have to pay for those themselves.

your post comes across like you’re a chancer trying to squeeze out as much money as possible from your employer. The £30 is there for 1 meal - how is that a “mean” amount? The guidance isn’t there to be kind or mean, it’s to cover your expenses. Some people in London do a weekly shop on £30…get some perspective

£30 is perfectly adequate for a meal. Many organisations don't want people getting pissed on their dollar, understandably. You can get two courses and a soft drink for £30. What more do you want? Do you think they should be paying for high meals?

Reading between the lines OP might want to host a Christmas party in London, so presumably wants the money to cover alcohol and all the trimmings

£30 for one evening meal sounds absolutely fine to me. Probably wouldn't cover a Christmas party meal though. We've always paid for our staff at Christmas parties, seems really tight to expect them to pay (as in to top up the £30 with their own money or buy drinks)

If you look at gov.uk the maximum amount of meal allowance before you get taxed is £25.

We've been stuck on £25 guidance for more than twenty years! On reality, as long as you don't take the piss, it gets signed off. Two reasonable courses and a glass of wine, yes, three courses and half a bottle, no.

£30 seems a decent amount. You could have a pizza or burger, fish and chips or something for a lot cheaper and be quids in if you wanted.

No fair enough £30 is fine for nights away, I was more thinking Xmas party set meals are more than that. I never drink when working away. And no I’m not a chancer, just thinking about inflation and how these things hadn’t changed much as costs have risen.

We do it a little differently so have a £30 per head spend for example, but instead order in loads of dominos pizza etc and so the remaining spend can go on other bits.

DH is public sector so no allowance and if they want a party they pay for it

I’ve never had a Christmas meal/party paid for, that’s so alien to me (public sector)

As others have said £30 for a meal while working away seems entirely acceptable.

We pay for our Christmas dinner so £30 towards it seems pretty generous to me.

I get fuck all. So sounds good to me. Not sure why workplaces need to pay anyway

Wow. Two starters, two mains, two medium glasses of wine each and two coffees (plus tip) at our local pub was over £100 last night. May be unreasonable to expect the alcohol on expenses but £30 seems on the low side.

When I'm away with work £30 is more than enough to feed myself for one night. Where are you eating?! If you want to meet people & make it fancy, you have to pay for the privilege I'm afraid.

I've worked for a private company that threw huge xmas parties and paid for everything, and in the public sector where we get nothing - to the point of clocking out while you have your office buffet which everyone contributed to.

It's a perk. Enjoy it for what it is.

We have £10 for lunch, £25 for dinner, national and international. It’s ridiculous (try to get food for that amount in Tokyo or Zurich!). Breakfast is unlimited though.
And before anybody goes “but you get an amazing trip for free”, the “amazing trip” consists of nonstop work, no free time to explore anything….

Completely agree, it’s quite hard now to do dinner comfortably within £30.

The average main in London is now £20-25 and a starter is usually £10-15. You also have to pay service charge of 12.5%. Even in Pizza Express, getting a pizza, side, soft drink and service charge would top £30 in Central London.

I only get 0.40 per mile from my employer and have to faff about getting another 0.05 set off against tax and I do a lot of mileage about 400 miles a week. If it were just a few miles I'd not bother.

Ours is £22.50 max for an evening meal if you're not having an overnight stay, and you need specific prior approval from a manager. If you're away from home for 24 hours then it's £40 max for all subsistence, actual receipted expenditure. "Employees need to exercise judgement to ensure any claims only cover basic requirements whilst on official duty."

Public sector so never had anything for Christmas we pay for a meal out as a team ourselves. Frankly I'm still amazed that in the last year they've started providing teabags and milk in the office.