SiteIt's 5am on a Monday and you're on the A38 with a flask and the radio. The job is a six-week shutdown on a packaging line 70 miles from home. You'll stay over Monday to Thursday and drive back Friday after the shift.
By the end you'll have done well over 1,000 miles and four nights a week in a hotel. The question is how much of that comes off your tax bill.
The answer turns on how you work, more than on the distance. A sole trader moving between sites, a director of their own company and an engineer paid through an umbrella can do the same drive and get different treatment.
Sole traders: is home your base?
The starting point is harsh. Travel between home and your place of work is generally not allowed. HMRC treats it as the cost of choosing where you live (HMRC BIM37605).
The way out is the itinerant trader. If your base is home and you travel to a run of different sites, each for a temporary job, HMRC allows the travel between home and those sites (HMRC BIM37620). The leading case was a bricklayer working sites up to 55 miles from home, about three weeks at each. A jobbing engineer doing breakdowns and cover for several sites looks a lot like that.
Where it goes wrong is one site, all year. HMRC's guidance says that if you work at two or more sites in a year, travel between home and those sites should normally be allowed. If you work at a single site and that's your normal pattern, the travel is only allowed if home is really the centre of your business (HMRC BIM37675). Twelve months at the same plant can make that plant your base.
There's a distance limit too, of a sort. The judge in the bricklayer case gave the example of a salesman who lives in London but whose patch is Cornwall. The trip to Cornwall wouldn't count. If all your work is in one area and you live well outside it, expect questions.
And stopping off on the way doesn't help. Dropping into a supplier on your normal run to site doesn't turn a home-to-work trip into a business one (HMRC BIM37630).
Actual costs or mileage
If the journeys count, you have two ways to claim.
You can claim actual costs, such as fuel, insurance, repairs, servicing, parking and breakdown cover (GOV.UK). You then take off the private share.
Or you can use simplified expenses and claim a flat rate per business mile. For 2026 to 2027 that's 55p* a mile for cars and vans for the first 10,000 miles, and 25p* after that. Before 6 April 2026 the first rate was 45p* (GOV.UK). You can add parking and other travel such as train fares on top.
Two catches with the flat rate. You can't use it for a vehicle you've already claimed capital allowances on. And once you use it for a vehicle, you must stick with it for as long as you use that vehicle for work.
For a van that does big miles, the flat rate is often simpler and close enough. For a new van on finance, do the sums both ways before you choose. GOV.UK has a checker that compares the two.
Keep a mileage log either way: date, site, from, to and miles. You need records of your business miles to use the flat rate (GOV.UK). An app or a notebook in the door pocket both work, as long as you fill it in the same day.
Nights away
When a job means a night away from home, the hotel and reasonable meals with it are deductible (HMRC BIM47705). So the shutdown hotel goes in, with the evening meal and breakfast.
Lunch on a site near home doesn't. HMRC uses the case of a sub-contractor buying lunches on sites near home to refuse those costs (HMRC BIM37675). Expenses you can and can't claim covers the rest of the list.
Limited company directors
As a director you count as an employee or office holder of your own company (GOV.UK), so the employee travel rules apply. Travel between home and a temporary workplace can qualify. Ordinary commuting to a permanent workplace gets no relief.
A workplace stops being temporary if you spend 40%* or more of your working time there over a period that lasts, or is likely to last, more than 24 months* (HMRC EIM32080). It's the expectation that counts. If a six-month contract gets extended to three years, the answer can change once that becomes the expectation.
If your company pays you mileage for your own car, the approved rate for 2026 to 2027 is 55p* a mile for the first 10,000 miles, then 25p* (GOV.UK). Anything above that has to be reported and taxed (GOV.UK).
Then there's IR35. Where you'd be an employee of the site if you were taken on directly, special rules for workers supplied through intermediaries can treat each engagement as a separate employment. That means no relief for home-to-work travel in most cases. The same rules can apply to your own company (GOV.UK). IR35 for hirers explains how the site makes that call.
Agency and umbrella workers
Those same rules cover agencies and umbrella companies. If you work under the site's supervision, direction or control, each engagement counts as a separate employment for travel. So you generally get no relief for travel from home to site, or for the food that goes with it (GOV.UK).
Be wary of any umbrella that tells you it can pay your travel tax-free as standard. Ask how it fits these rules before you sign. Umbrella, limited or PAYE covers what to check.
Our view
Price the travel into the job. Whatever HMRC allows, the fuel, the hotel and the hours on the M6 are real costs. A site 70 miles out should pay more than one down the road, or cover the hotel. Day rates covers how to build that in.
What to do on Monday
- Start a mileage log today, and back-fill it from your invoices and fuel receipts.
- Count how many sites you worked at this tax year. If it's one, talk to your accountant about travel.
- Choose actual costs or the flat rate for each vehicle, and write down which.
- Ask for travel or a hotel to be covered before you accept a job that's a long way from home.
* Simplified expenses mileage rates, approved mileage rates and the 40% and 24-month temporary workplace tests correct as of 26 October 2026. Check GOV.UK's simplified expenses for vehicles and HMRC's travel and mileage rates for the latest.