I am director/sole shareholder of a Ltd company, and I have a question in relation to claiming my travelling expenses.
The HMRC website says:
"Only two types of journey count as business travel:
journeys that form part of an employee's employment duties (such as journeys between clients' premises by a salesperson)
journeys that relate to an employee's attendance at a temporary workplace"
Here is the link - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/exb/a-z/m/mileage-expenses.htm#x2
So if I'm travellling so see a client, that seems stright-forward enough - this would clearly be an "employee's employment duty" as above, and I can just DR my Employee Travel Expenses account with the mileage.
But what if I need to travel for other reasons? For example, travelling to a shop to buy stationery, or to buy a computer? There are a number of other situations where one has to incur travel costs for the purposes of the business, but which don't seem to fall under the category of "employee's employment duties"...
Is it possible to claim such travel? And if so, how would I detail it in the accounts, if not in the Employee Travel Expenses account?
I cannot see a problem with travel expenses for such things, they would fall into the employee duties, say if you sent any other employee out to collect them.
I think the main thing is good old "Wholley & Exclusively". If the trip is purely for the purpose of purchasing a business item (or going to the bank for that matter), no problem. If on the other hand you went grocery shopping and also bought an item for the business (or deposted some money into the business account), while you were there, then it should not be claimed as a business trip.
Would agree with Bill in that you can claim for any purely business related trip eg to buy office goods, to do banking etc. Unless you live out in the countryside far away from your usual supplier the travel involved shouldnt be very much in the year so dont expect HMRC would question it should it be raised provided you have evidence to support the claim.
My understanding is that you can claim for travel, parking etc...for things like trips to the stationers or to the bank on business related matters such as banking cheque's.
As long as its all for business use then their should not be an issue.
I would watch however if you mix business and pleasure.
Also watch out for say if you pay for 3 hours parking, and you go stationery shopping, then this could be disputed, unless however you can prove that the minimum time payment for parking is 3 hours.
Another issue is if travelling from home to a client/customer, you can claim for the trip but it has to be the shorter of either home to client or office to client (this may not be 100% accurate as it was a while since I have dealt with this issue)
Just record all travel expenses such as parking and mileage in the travel expenses code, things like hotel stays/meals etc can be put in another specific code if you wish or put in travel together.
