Self employed mileage rates

From the information you have given there is no doubt that your travelling is commuting.

The difference is not determined by who employs you (i.e. you or someone else). Commuting is travel between home and permanent place of work. Business travel is travel between various places of work.

The only way your travel could count as business travel is if you could reasonably count your home as being your permanent place of work, but the facts don't support that here.

I'm guessing here but it sounds to me as if you are likely to fall under IR35. Has the change been made just to avoid NI etc or is there a new and different contract in place?

If your working relationship has changed and you don't fall under IR35 then it would seem reasonable that your mileage is business. I was allowed (by IR) to claim business mileage to a client where I had my own office and worked there 4 days/week for well over 2 years.

It's a different company as before, although the type of work is identical. Infact it's becoming quite common in the industry I work in for companies to not employ persons as they used to, mainly due to lack of work, so they avoid paying staff in between projects.

I worked from home for 8 years, and my employer defined my place of work as my home. The Inland Revenue accepted that. I usually travelled to their office once a week, and elsewhere as required.

And could you claim mileage?

Yes. In fact I was driving a company car at the time, and this all counted as allowable business travel. I claimed for the petrol pro-rata to my private mileage/business mileage.

Drivel. His place of work is his home. The fact that he travels to a clients premises does not affect that *unless* his contract extends over a period that I have forgotten but I hope somone else can recall.

I think there are a lot of people who would dearly wish you to be right, but I don't think you are.

Not according to the way he described his circumstances.

I think a "temporary workplace" can last up to two years, but that usually applies in an employment context (where there is a change of workplace from the normal permanent one (to which travel from home is "commuting") to a temporary one where it would be unreasonable to expect the employee to move house to shorten his commute, hence the added commuting counts, by concession, as business travel).

Being self-employed doesn't automatically make your home your place of work. AIUI even a self-employed cleaner, say, visiting three different clients in a day (A, B, and C in that order), would have to count Home->A and C->Home as disallowable commuting, and only A->B and B->C as allowable business travel.

Hmmm, quite a bit different to my circumstances then.

Finally got through to the Self Assessment Helpline and they say that I can claim. Of course when have government workers been correct?!

And judging by the replies here, it's not a simple answer!

Ask for the HMRC to give that advice in writing.

Of course your place of work was your home if you worked from home!

The OP travelled to a place of work.