Tax query- travel expenses to work.

[Thandeka]

Hi,
Just getting to grips with self employment having dabbled in it for last year or so but now i am mainly self employed with one day a week employed work. Now I know for my self employed work I can claim travel expenses for meetings etc. However I was wondering about claiming for the travel to and from my place of employed work. Can you do that?
This is probably somehting really obvious and googleable so apologies if its a stupid question.

no, you can't claim from home to work - that is personal costs.

In general no, you cannot claim for travel from your home to a place of work at which you are an employee. If it is a temporary place of work (as opposed to part time), which generally means that you will work at that location for less than two years then you may be able to.

This is very much not a stupid question - look at the HMRC manual on this subject for an idea of how complex it is.

You can't claim for your normal journey to work, no, or at least not without it being a taxable benefit, unless it's a temporary change in your normal workplace or something.

I'd be very surprised if your employer were prepared to pay you travel expenses for your normal commute anyway tbh..

Ah ok. Thanks for the help and what a quagmire it all is.

Right just to double check this then as am now scared I got it wrong...

I am self employed. I generally work from home. About 3 or 4 times a week I have to go for meetings in schools or other venues across the borough. As I am self employed as a consultant they said it was easier to give me an extra £5 per day on top of my normal dayrate to cover expenses- so I don't get to claim any expenses such as mileage from the people my contract is with- but these journeys that aren't to my place of work and are therefore a business expense of mine?

Is that okay?

I HATE TAX RETURNS and remind me to get an accountant for next year!

Yes that is all correct .

MrAnchovy I may hate your fishy kind on pizzas but I think I love you!

I presume you are showing the extra £5 as income and deducting your costs in getting to the meeting?

Yup it means my dayrate with them is classed as £305 rather than £300. (Is quite nice as my expenses probably aren't always £5 a day but sometimes they are more so hopefully it balances out).

Oooh and another thing I want to double check. My employer for one day a week is a school. We have already established I can't claim for trips to my place of work so obviously I won't. However when working as a consultant I sometimes have to go into my school but I am there in a consultant self employed capacity and NOT as an employee of the school so I have just been claiming for those journeys as I would any other journey. These journeys do not fall on my day of work with the school. Is that allowed!?

consultant days - claim expenses - yes that is fine.

When you say claiming, you do mean claiming them as an expense when working out your taxable profit?

yes I think that is what I mean!
Yes. (clueless first time tax returner here- although don't panic- I am doing last years tax return now which for me was only sept-april (as started as self employed in sept 08) and haven't really claimed for all the stuff I am entitled (mainly travel) so am figuring it all out so my tax return 09/10 will be a piece of taxationary genius!

Am not working out backdated travel for 08/09 as that would be a nightmare given I probably should have posted my tax return last week!

you have until Jan 10 to submit your tax return.
Try and work out all the travel expenses you can, to minimise your tax liability.