Many employees have a place of work which they regularly attend and make occasional trips out of the normal workplace to a temporary workplace.
Journeys between an employee’s home and a permanent workplace which he or she regularly attends are not classed as business journeys. The term ‘permanent workplace’ is defined as a place which the employee regularly attends. It is used in order to fix one end of the journey for ordinary commuting purposes. Home refers to the other end of the journey for normal commuting purposes. These journeys are classed as ‘ordinary commuting’ and the costs of these have to be borne by the employee.
Often an employee will travel directly from home to a temporary workplace and vice versa. In this case, an employee can claim full tax relief on business journeys made. A business journey is one which involves travel which is either:
An employee usually commutes by car between home in York and a normal place of work in Leeds. This is a daily round trip of 48 miles. On a particular day, the employee instead drives from home in York to a temporary place of work in Nottingham, a round trip of 174 miles.
The cost here is the cost of the travel undertaken (174 miles). A deduction would be available for that amount.
An employee who normally drives 40 miles in a northerly direction to work is required to make a 100 mile round trip south to a client’s premises. His employer reimburses him for the cost of the 100 mile trip. A deduction would be available for that amount.
Subsistence includes the costs of accommodation and food and drink, while an employee is away from the permanent workplace. Subsistence expenditure is specifically treated as a product of business travel and is therefore treated as part of the cost of that travel. So, if the travel costs qualify for tax relief, so will the subsistence costs. HMRC are usually happy to give relief for the costs of breakfast and evening meals if the employee stays away from home overnight, but often do not look as favourably on other costs, such as lunch, particularly if the employee has not stayed away overnight.
Some travel between a temporary workplace and home may not qualify for relief if the trip made is substantially similar to the trip made to or from the permanent workplace.
‘Substantially similar’ is interpreted by HMRC as a trip using the same roads or the same train or bus for most of the journey.