For the car expenses I would keep a mileage log of your business journeys, so record the 60 miles. At the end of the year you can allow 45p per business mile as an expense, which would equate to £1404 if you did the same journey every week for 52 weeks of the year (you probably wont do 52 week's, so only claim actual mileage, including other business only miles you do). If you choose this method, you cannot claim any other type of expense for your car.
The phone bill can be a bit trickier, and will depend on your phone plan/ tariff.
IF the plan is all inclusive then you cannot claim, as you would have paid that amount anyway. IF you excede any allowance on the plan then you may be able to.
Although as a way of calculating an employees expense EIM32951 show how to calculate mobile phone expenses.
This is my first post, i started bookkeeping for a client a couple of months ago, i really don't know what expenses i can claim for i travel roughly 60 miles once a week as i work from their premisies can i claim for mileage / diesel etc. I am so new to this i have tried looking on the HMRC website and i can't make sense of it! I also use my mobile phone but as its a contract not sure how to apportion it as i have so many minutes / texts included. I am also employed part time for a company.
As far as I am aware you should be claiming for your travel costs, I'm not sure how you would do this hope someone comes along who can advise you in more detail. But if it were me I would definately charge for going out to a clients premises on a regular basis. Probably not for just going out to do a consultation or to pick up paperwork unless it was very far.
If you ask your phone provider for an itemised bill you could highlight the calls that are used for business purposes and and total them all up then add these to your expenses.
You can claim 45p mile for the first 10k business miles and 25p per mile thereafter. You should keep a log book in order to justify your claim eg date travelled, destination, mileage.
Other option is to claim for all your car costs eg petrol, insurance, mot, repairs etc and then disallow the non business % based on a reasonableness split. You can also claim capital allowances on the fair value of your car.
When you choose a method you need to stick with it and cant chop and change (until you change car when you can change).
If your turnover is over the VAT threshold limit (£70k something at the moment) then you can only apply the 2nd option.
Re the telephone you could get an itemised bill and split according to business/personal use and claim the relevant proportion.
