Self Employed Mileage

Must be a very versatile self employed contractor to be getting involved in all those activities. I suppose one has to diversify to survive. Does he answer homework questions too?

Depends, inter alia, on where the base of ops is for each activity. Assuming the "obvious", then...

Disallow - contract cleaning, driving to paper shop.

Allow - delivering papers and driving to do installations (assuming various customers and premises).

Hee hee. But does it matter where he gets the answers from?... or rather "... from where he gets the answers?"

I'm interested as to why you "allow" travel to sites for installations. Even if, say, the contractor lives in Plymouth and all the installations are in Greater London? And there are no tools etc kept at home? (In passing, do practitioners now see some advantages in clients taking the IR35 route in this respect - ie to get the benefit of the employment income rules for home-work travel?)

In the those circs it wouldn't (normally) be allowed - as I suspect you already know.

Like loads of questions on here, it's not practical to give all the exceptions, etc, which is why I took the trouble to write (but you've snipped) "Depends, inter alia, on where the base of ops is for each activity. Assuming the "obvious", then..."

In your example, the decision to live that far from such a confined client base usually (but not always) renders "home to work" travel disallowable. (There's a significant case on this, which you can prob find on HMRC web together with others on related issues).

No. IR35 is irrelevant for sole traders - it embraces Ltd Coys (commonly OMCs) and P'ships, and is something which may apply, rather than something you "opt" for.

For the record, whether the employment status of the OP's contractor is correct, in each of the 3 scenarios given, is quite another matter. but he didn't ask about that.

HTH

Fair point. And if the OP is asking such questions I suspect he would benefit from reading what "base of operations" means eg in

yes indeed -

Yes. Sorry for being unclear. What I meant to ask was whether the legislation for employees' travel made it that bit more attractive to use a company (off-the-shelf or umbrella) rather than operate as a sole trader given the statutory provisions for employees about temporary places of work.

And does the homework get an extra mark if it makes explicit the assumption that the contractor is in the UK? OTOH I suspect marks would be lost for being too clever by half if it went on to query whether the contractor owns the "family car" and incurs the costs of running it as opposed to - say - it being a car made available by the contractor's parents at no cost to the contractor :)

Why is this obvious? If you are an SE builder then the drive that you have to do was to the DIY store to pick up some building consumables this would be allowed. Why is the paper round example different?

tim

You've deliberately (or through ignorance) misconstrued my use of the word "obvious".

Try this link for help

"If... then" ...? That doesn't follow at all. Or didn't you do commas at school?

Not necessarily - check out the well known dentist example. All my builder clients have deliveries made to site. Only DIY people need to collect - and they're not SE builders by definition.

Read the milkman (IIRC) example at HMRC.

If you read more, and read more carefully, instead of trying to troll here all the time under the guise of a question, you might actually be able to contribute to an answer.

Excuse me.

I've been posting here for in excess of 5 years and in that time IIRC I have asked one question.

tim

Why is it disallowed? The OP said the journey would not otherwise be made. That means the costs would eat into any profits and it would be unfair to not be able claim these back.

(I live in UK, but used to have clients based 500, 700, and 4000 miles away. Where was I supposed to live, equidistant from them all (and in the middle of the Atlantic)?)

Because it's the law. Not to be confused with logic, fairness, common sense etc... (although I happen to think the judgement is right).

More info here...

and in particular... "The Judge cited the example of a commercial traveller living in London but whose ?patch? was Cornwall. The cost of travel between London and Cornwall would not be allowable even if the person had a ?travelling occupation?. "

They do anyway. The issue is whether the tax payer should pick up any part of the cost of the commuting.

You evidently had widely spread clients, which is a quite different scenario. In the example we're discussing here, Robin said "if, say, the contractor lives in Plymouth and all the installations are in Greater London?"

That's on all fours with Brightman's comments (above).

Thanks - that is what I assumed.

It was a transition year which is why things are so diverse.