Tax relief on travel to a temporary workplace

You cannot claim tax relief for the journey between home and your normal workplace, but you can for travel to a temporary workplace. HMRC treats a place as temporary if you go there only for a task of limited duration or for a temporary purpose. It stops being temporary if you expect to spend 40% or more of your working time there over more than 24 months. Agency workers are treated differently, and it often works against them.

Permanent or temporary

A permanent workplace is somewhere you attend regularly to do your duties and which is not a temporary workplace. A temporary workplace is where you go only to do a task of limited duration or for a temporary purpose, even if you attend it regularly. A project that runs for a set period at another site counts. A meeting at a second site, where you do your normal duties either side of it, does not turn that site into a permanent one.

If you qualify, the cost of the journey from home to the temporary workplace is business travel and can be claimed. HMRC’s own wording is that the trip has to be dictated by the duties of the job and not by your convenience. Stopping off on the way to make phone calls does not turn commuting into business travel.

The 24 month rule

Even when the task is time-limited, a workplace is permanent if you attend it as part of continuous work that lasts, or is likely to last, more than 24 months. HMRC applies this where you spend or are likely to spend 40% or more of your working time at the place. Both parts must be met: 40% of your time and more than 24 months.

The test looks at expectation. If you are told a secondment will last 18 months, the site is temporary from the start, and relief applies. If it is later extended past 24 months, relief stops from the date the expectation changed. If you expect from the outset to be there more than 24 months at 40% or more, the site is permanent from day one, even if the posting later ends early.

Peripatetic and area-based jobs

If your duties are defined by a geographical area and you have no other permanent workplace, the area itself is your permanent workplace. HMRC’s example is a relief manager covering all offices in a region: travel to the edge of the area is commuting, while business journeys within it are claimable. If you have a normal base you attend regularly, that base is a permanent workplace even if you spend much of the day visiting people. HMRC’s own social worker example has a regular office, so home to the office is commuting but travel to and from clients is business travel.

Having several workplaces that you attend regularly on a pattern, such as a different site each weekday on a fixed rota, means each one is permanent. Travel between two of them during the day is still travel in the performance of your duties and can be claimed. Mileage allowance and tax relief covers what you can claim for the miles.

Agency and supply work

HMRC says an agency worker whose income is taxed as employment income and who generally attends one workplace for each engagement usually has a permanent workplace at that site. If you work through an agency and do several different jobs in one day, you may get relief for travel between them but not from home to the first or from the last back home. Where you provide services through an employment intermediary, such as an agency or umbrella company, and the work is similar to an employee’s, each assignment is treated as a separate employment, and regular commuting to the client’s site is not eligible.

For supply teachers, bank nurses and other flexible staff, the answer therefore depends on how you are engaged, and it is often no. See agency worker rights and locum work for how those arrangements differ.

What you can claim

If travel qualifies, GOV.UK lists public transport, hotel accommodation if you must stay overnight, food and drink, congestion charges and tolls, parking fees, and business phone calls and printing costs. You may also claim for business mileage. You cannot claim for ordinary commuting.

How to claim

Use the gov.uk service for travel and overnight expenses, which checks whether you can claim and walks you through it. If you complete Self Assessment, you claim on the return instead. For hotel and meal claims you need receipts showing the date and the name of the hotel or restaurant. HMRC normally gives relief by adjusting your tax code or paying a refund, depending on the year.

If you are unsure whether a site is temporary, the employer’s payroll team or HMRC can confirm how they treat it.