Staff travel expenses

Normally where an employee incurs business-related expenses, the reimbursement of them should be rported on a P11D but the employee can claim a deduction for them. Therefore, there is no impact on the employee’s tax liability but there is some paperwork to be completed.

As an alternative, you could pay the HMRC benchmark travel and subsistence payments, which are:

• 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles; 25p per mile thereafter
• £5 for breakfast if the business journey starts before 6am
• £5 if the employee spends more than five hours away and buys one meal
• £10 if they’re out for more than ten hours and they buy two meals
• £15 if they are out beyond 8pm, and buy an evening meal

Your staff must purchase some food and with the benchmark subsistence payments, but it could be just a sandwich and anything they don’t spend is theirs to keep tax and NI-free.

Needless to say, there are other criteria to meet in order to qualify for these exemptions though. Please contact us to be put in touch with your local TaxAssist Accountant to discuss this further.

Date published 1 Nov 2013

This article is intended to inform rather than advise and is based on legislation and practice at the time. Taxpayer’s circumstances do vary and if you feel that the information provided is beneficial it is important that you contact us before implementation. If you take, or do not take action as a result of reading this article, before receiving our written endorsement, we will accept no responsibility for any financial loss incurred.