Whether you are self-employed or an employee, you will inevitably travel by car as part of your working life . This not only ties up your time, but there are also the running costs of your car to consider. This blog will outline which costs you are able to recover and how to do so.
The rules on how to claim business mileage and other vehicle costs depend on whether you trade as a sole trader, partnership or limited company, but what classes as business mileage is the same for all.

What classes as business mileage?

You can make a claim for mileage if the journey is ‘wholly and exclusively’ for business purposes. HMRC considers this to mean one of the following:

• You go somewhere other than your usual workplace to do your job (e.g. an associate doing temporary work at another practice)
• You are travelling between two different places of work on the same day
• The main purpose of your journey is business (e.g. journeys to training courses and seminars are allowable). However, you cannot turn a private journey into business travel by running a work-related errand on the way.

If you trade as a sole trader or partnership

As a sole trader/partnership, there are two ways you can claim mileage expenses:

• You can claim the proportion of your petrol, repairs/maintenance, tax, insurance and other costs relating to the business use of your vehicle, provided you can adequately prove the business proportion. A good way to split the costs between your business and personal use is to maintain a mileage log of all business journeys and note the mileometer total at the start and end of each tax year.
• Alternatively you can keep a log of the business miles driven and make a claim at the relevant standard rate shown in the table below. You can generally also claim parking charges, motorway toll fees and congestion charges alongside this flat rate.

Type of vehicle	First 10,000 miles	Each mile over 10,000 miles
Cars and vans	45p	25p
Motorcycles	24p	24p
Bicycles	20p	20p

Once you use the flat rates for a vehicle, you must continue to do so as long as you use that vehicle for your business.

If you trade as a limited company

In this instance, you need to consider whether it is better for the car to be owned by the company or the individual director. We recommend that this decision is taken with the advice of a knowledgeable accountant.

If the car is owned by the company, the costs that can be met by the company are outlined here.

If the car is owned by the individual director, then the mileage rates in the table above apply.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.