Any accountants on here? Help with tax return

[Delarado]

Hi guys,


I have some questions around filling in my tax return, I hope you can help me.


I am employed full time by a UK company who supply me a fuel card for business and personal use. They do NOT supply me with a car, I have to use my own. They do however note a "car allowance" on my pay slip.


As I understand it, I should keep a record of all of my mileage (Business and personal) to perform calculation for my tax return. Its this bit im struggling with a bit.


Someone told me that I need to work out my business miles, do 40p x 10,000 for the first 10,000 miles and then 25p x whatever the remaining mileage is.


So If I do 10,000 business miles I get the figure of £4000.


My question is, what do I do with this number? how does it fit into my tax return?


Someone told me I should just put it in box 17 and forget about it but I want to be sure before I get it wrong!


Would someone mind giving me a breakdown of what all these figures actually mean, before I enter them, and how they affect me going forward please? Because I'm not sure!!

[Mrmani]

Hi,
Slightly different situation, but I also have a car allowance on my salary, which is taxed on PAYE, I am now only permitted to claim 18p per mile for any business use, this has recently changed from 40p per mile for the first 10k miles and our accountant at work claims these are the rules from HMRC for staff such as me with a car allowance. It also varies by engine size. I don't have a fuel card, but recover business miles only at 18P per mile on expenses from my employer

You must record daily mileage for HMRC and I would imagine they would need to see a calculation on how you pay for your personal mileage on fuel from your company fuel card, as this is treated as benefit in kind.
Since you have a fuel card, The other question on business mileage allowance is to cover wear and tear on your private vehicle and should be paid to you by your employer either as expenses or as part of your salary after tax, what is written in your contract of employment ?

Garry

[steve_b]

It may be worth giving the Inland Revenue a call, the people I've spoken to there when there has been issues with the tax on my company car have been really helpful, as to what to do as this looks like an interesting one.

I'm not an accountant but have run company cars for a while and had to do tax returns in the past, so this is my opinion only.

The 40p mileage rate that you'd claim back is to reimburse fuel as well as deprecation / wear and tear / maintenance on the car when you use your own car and the employer isn't paying you anything, but as your employer has given you a fuel card then you'd not be able to claim at the 40p for 10k miles and 25p thereafter as you're getting a big portion of that amount already paid.
At my place we're on the same as Garry with the 18p HMRC rate for mileage, which is the HMRC company car fuel rate, if you're using your own car then you can claim back an additional 22p (40p - 18p) / mile for 10k miles and then 7p / mile after that. As I've got a company car then I can't claim anything back off the IR as all my cars bills are taken care of by the company, I do however have a hefty tax bill for this pleasure but, it works out better for me.

Also if you're getting personal mileage paid for as well then this would be classed as a benefit in kind so there would be tax to pay on that, however if you're paying you company for the personal mileage, at a HMRC agreed rate, then the benefit in kind issue goes away.