Travel and Subsistence — What Trades Can Claim for Travel, Meals and Overnight Stays (2026)

The Basic Rule: Permanent vs Temporary Workplaces

The starting point is simple to state and easy to get wrong. Travel between your home and a permanent workplace is ordinary commuting and is not claimable. Travel to a temporary workplace, and travel between jobs during the working day, generally is claimable as business travel.

A permanent workplace is somewhere you attend regularly as the base for your work — for many people that's a single office or yard. A temporary workplace is one you go to for a task of limited duration or a temporary purpose. For most mobile trades — plumbers, electricians, roofers, decorators, gas engineers — each customer's site is a temporary workplace, and the journeys to those sites are business travel rather than commuting.

The "No Fixed Base" / Itinerant Trader Point

Many tradespeople have no single permanent workplace at all. You leave home, drive to whichever site you're working on that day, and the location changes from job to job. Where your work is genuinely itinerant — your home is the base from which you run the business and you travel out to varying sites — home-to-site travel can be allowable. HMRC accepts that some traders have no permanent workplace, so the "ordinary commuting" restriction simply doesn't bite.

How this is set up matters. If your home is the genuine base of operations — you keep your tools, stock and van there, you do your quoting, invoicing and admin there, and you have no separate yard or office you attend daily — the case for treating home-to-site mileage as business travel is strong. If you have a fixed yard or unit you attend every morning before going out, that yard is likely your permanent workplace and home-to-yard travel becomes commuting. It's worth getting your accountant to confirm how your particular setup is treated, because it affects every journey you make.

The 24-Month Rule for Temporary Workplaces

A workplace can lose its "temporary" status — and this mainly catches employees and limited company directors rather than sole traders. Under the 24-month rule, a workplace stops being temporary once you have spent, or expect to spend, more than 40% of your working time there over a period that exceeds 24 months. Once either limb is breached, the site becomes a permanent workplace and travel to it becomes ordinary commuting that can't be claimed.

The expectation matters as much as the actual time. If you take on a contract you know from the outset will run more than two years at more than 40% of your time, the workplace is permanent from day one — you don't get 24 months of relief first.

Trade example: a director-employee of a small electrical firm is placed on a large new-build or commercial fit-out site for an 18-month contract, spending nearly all their time there. That's a temporary workplace and travel is claimable. But if the contract is extended and it becomes clear the work will run beyond 24 months — and it's taking up more than 40% of their week — the site becomes a permanent workplace from the point that expectation changes, and travel there is no longer allowable.

What You Can Claim on a Business Trip

When a journey qualifies as business travel, you can claim the cost of getting there and the reasonable cost of meals and accommodation while you're away from your normal base. The main categories are:

• Vehicle / travel costs: if you use your own vehicle you can claim mileage at the HMRC approved rates — 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, then 25p per mile thereafter (24p per mile for motorcycles, 20p for bicycles). Alternatively you can claim the actual running costs of the vehicle in proportion to business use. You can also claim train fares, fuel, parking, tolls and the congestion charge for business journeys.
• Subsistence: reasonable meals and refreshments when you're travelling on business and away from your normal base.
• Accommodation: hotel or B&B costs for overnight stays away from home on business.

Note that the mileage rates and the actual-cost method are mutually exclusive for a given vehicle — once you pick one for a vehicle you stick with it for as long as you own it. For more on choosing between them, see our mileage guidance.

Subsistence — Meals and Refreshments

Subsistence is one of the most commonly over-claimed expenses, so it's worth being clear. You can claim the cost of a meal when the travel is genuine business travel away from your normal pattern — for example, a meal bought while working at a distant temporary site, or while travelling to a job some way from your usual area. What you can't claim is the everyday lunch you'd buy anyway near a regular base. The cost of feeding yourself during a normal working day isn't a business expense just because you're self-employed.

For limited companies, employers can use HMRC benchmark scale rates to reimburse employees and directors for subsistence without having to keep every receipt, provided the qualifying conditions are met and a checking system is in place. Otherwise, reimburse the actual cost and keep the receipts. Either way, keep receipts where you can — HMRC will want evidence that the travel was genuine business travel, not a routine meal dressed up as one.

Overnight Stays

If a job takes you far enough from home that staying overnight is reasonable, you can claim the cost of the accommodation (hotel or B&B) plus a reasonable evening meal and breakfast. On top of that, there's the incidental overnight expenses allowance to cover the small extras of being away — things like phone calls home, newspapers or laundry. The tax-free limits are £5 per night for stays in the UK and £10 per night for overseas stays.

The incidental overnight allowance is a per-night figure that applies to the whole trip — if the limit is exceeded, the entire amount becomes taxable, not just the excess, so keep incidentals within the cap. Accommodation and meals themselves are claimed on top of this and aren't restricted to the £5.

Sole Trader vs Limited Company

The same underlying principles apply, but the mechanism is different depending on how you trade:

• Sole traders: you simply deduct allowable travel and subsistence as a business expense in your accounts, reducing your taxable profit. There's no reimbursement step — the cost is the business's cost.
• Limited companies: the company reimburses the employee or director for qualifying travel and subsistence, and where the rules are met that reimbursement is tax-free with no National Insurance. If a payment doesn't meet the rules — for example, reimbursing ordinary commuting — it becomes a taxable benefit in kind (BiK) reportable on a P11D, with tax and Class 1A NIC to pay.

This is why the permanent-vs-temporary distinction matters so much for company directors: get it wrong and a claim you thought was tax-free turns into a taxable benefit.

Records — Keep a Mileage Log and Receipts

Travel claims are a known HMRC focus, and the burden of proof is on you. The two things that protect a claim are a mileage log and receipts.

• Record every business journey: date, start and end point, the job or customer it relates to, and the miles. A contemporaneous log is far more credible than a reconstruction at year end.
• Keep receipts for fuel, parking, tolls, congestion charge, train fares, meals and accommodation. Note on each what the trip was for.
• For overnight trips, keep the hotel invoice and meal receipts together with a note of the job that required the stay.
• If you use the actual-cost method for your vehicle, keep records of total running costs and the business-use proportion.

Logging journeys against the job they relate to as you go — rather than trying to remember at the end of the year — is the single best habit for surviving an enquiry. It also makes your claim quicker to prepare and harder to challenge.

Quick Reference: Travel & Subsistence for Trades 2026

A Note on Tax Advice

This article is general information and not tax advice. Travel and subsistence rules turn on the specific facts of your work — where your base is, how your contracts are structured, and whether you trade as a sole trader or through a company — and the figures and thresholds can change. Before relying on any claim, speak to a qualified accountant who can look at your circumstances. Getting the setup right once is far cheaper than unwinding a disallowed claim later.