UK Mileage

Mileage Allowance Payments (MAPs) are what you pay your employee for using their own vehicle for business journeys.

You can pay your employee an approved amount of MAPs each year without having to report them to HMRC. The approved MAPs, or AMAPs, are calculated by multiplying the approved rate (which covers wear and tear, in addition to fuel used) by the business miles driven. The approved rate varies by the mode of transportation and cumulative business miles travelled in a given tax year:

Approved Mileage Rates

Note: If your employee carries another employee in their own car or van on a business journey, you can pay them passenger payments of up to 5p per mile, per passenger, tax free.

Additional notes on the mileage allowance:

• It does not matter if your employee uses more than one vehicle in a year – it’s all calculated together.
• If you pay more than the approved amount, the excess must be added to any other earnings the employee receives in the earnings period.
• Anything below the approved amount you will not have to report to HMRC or pay tax, but, your employee will be able to get tax relief (called Mileage Allowance Relief, or ) on the unused balance of the approved amount MAR.
• This only applies to employees using their own vehicle. If you are reimbursing your employees for fuel mileage on a company car, please refer to the HMRC’s advisory fuel rate calculation: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advisory-fuel-rates#when-you-can-use-the-mileage-rates
• “Ordinary commuting”, or any travel from your home to a permanent workplace, is not approved for MAPs.

Reclaim on VAT mileage

As a business, companies can reclaim VAT on their employees’ mileage expenses if they’re paying their employees a mileage allowance for using their own vehicle for work. However, companies will only be able to reclaim the VAT from the fuel portion of the mileage claim.

Advisory Fuel Rates

For calculation of the fuel portion of a business trip, a simple method is applied by using HMRC published Advisory Fuel Rates (AFR). The rates are published by HMRC to cover the amount of fuel you can attribute to a mileage claim of a business trip.

The rate varies based on the type of fuel (petrol, diesel, or LPG) and the engine size of your vehicle.

Rates-per-mile

From 1 March 2024

From 1 December 2023

From 1 September 2023

From 1 June 2023

From 1 March 2023

Once the fuel part is known, you can then claim back the VAT (20%) on your fuel expenses.

Other notes on advisory rates:

• Hybrid cars are treated as either petrol or diesel cars for advisory fuel rates.
• The HMRC reviews AFRs quarterly: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advisory-fuel-rates
• Tax relief is available only to the extent that an expense has actually been incurred, so employees must keep a record of the fuel receipts if companies want to claim the VAT on the mileage expenses.
• You can use the previous rates for up to 1 month from the date any new rates apply.