I drive high mileage for work - circa 15000 business miles per annum, as do all of my team.
HMRC mileage rates have increased to 55p for the first 10000 miles from April 2026
Obviously the claim previously was 45p per mile. So far my work have refused to increase to 55p per mile and have stated that we can claim the additional 10p per mile in our self assessment. To give an idea, from my April mileage alone my claim is an additional £205 with the extra 10p.
Personally I do a self assessment each year due to the high income child benefit charge however my colleagues don’t and hence don’t want to have to only be entitled to this additional amount by starting to do self assessments. Equally I’m not even sure we can claim just a portion of the mileage cost each year through a self assessment - I’ve never had to add this in as a tax deduction since I’ve always been paid it through work
On a further note - with the fuel price increase and increasing mechanics and parts cost - our cars literally do end up costing a fortune in maintenance so the extra 10p per mile really does make a difference to us. With doing high mileage each year, we all tend to buy newer and reliable cars we can depend on (doing hundreds of miles a day often means I just want a car that gets me there and back each day) so payments for those are often higher than we get for car allowance.
So does anyone know if work have to pay the 55p per mile or if they can indeed stay at the 45p per mile?