Mileage claim calculator
What a year of business miles is worth at HMRC’s approved rates, with the 10,000-mile band in the right place. Free, nothing to sign up for.
At 45p
10,000 miles
At 25p
2,000 miles
Worth
£5,000
Claiming 25p on all 12,000 miles would give £3,000, and 45p on all of them would give £5,400. Neither is right: the rate changes at 10,000 miles, and only on the miles above it.
Somebody pays me a different rate
The band is per tax year, and it starts on 6 April
Not 1 January, and not your own year end. A van doing 20,000 business miles claims £7,000 — £4,500 on the first ten thousand and £2,500 on the rest. Put the drop in the wrong place and the figure moves by hundreds.
It is also per vehicle, so a second van starts again at 45p.
Paid 25p a mile? You have not lost 20p
Most people assume a low mileage rate is simply a worse deal. It is partly recoverable: the gap between what you were paid and the approved rate is Mileage Allowance Relief, claimed against tax.
8,000 miles at 25p is £2,000 paid against £3,600 approved, so £1,600 comes off your taxable income. Going the other way, anything paid above the approved rate is pay and goes through payroll — a business paying 60p a mile without realising that has a payroll problem rather than a generous mileage policy.
It is either the mileage rate or the real costs
Never both for the same vehicle. The rate stands in for fuel, insurance, servicing, tyres, repairs and capital allowances, and the choice is fixed for as long as that vehicle is in the business.
For a high-mileage van the rate usually wins comfortably. For a vehicle that cost a lot and does few miles, the real costs often do. It is a conversation worth having with your accountant once, before the first claim.
The hard part is remembering the miles
The sum is easy; the record is what gets lost. HMRC wants to see the journeys — date, where to, why, and how far — and a claim with no log behind it is the one that gets reduced.
Every job in a diary already has an address on it, which is most of a mileage log written for you.
A note on what this is
A guide, not advice, and it uses the approved rates as they have stood since April 2011. Check the current figures and anything about a permanent workplace with your accountant.
Built by TaskMyJob, which plans the day around the driving and reports what the travel actually costs. More free tools: your hourly rate, VAT, or all of them.