Travel is one of the biggest expense claims for tradespeople, consultants and anyone who visits clients. It is also where HMRC's rules are most often misunderstood: the question is not whether you drove for work, but where your business is based and how often you go to the same place.
Written and reviewed by James Whitfield · Last reviewed 19 October 2026 · Checked against 2026/27 HMRC rates · Editorial standards · Methodology
You can claim business travel: fuel and running costs or the simplified rate of 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in 2026/27 (then 25p), plus train, bus, taxi and air fares, parking, hotels and meals on overnight business trips.12 You cannot claim travel between home and your regular place of work, fines, or day-to-day lunches.13 If you work from home and go out to clients or different sites, those trips are usually business travel.45 Meals on day trips count only when the trip is outside your normal pattern of travel.6
Related: Van, car and equipment tax relief · Working from home expenses · Allowable expenses: full list
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GOV.UK lists the travel costs you can deduct for business journeys: vehicle insurance, repairs and servicing, fuel, parking, hire charges, vehicle tax, breakdown cover, train, bus, tram, air and taxi fares, hotel rooms, and meals on overnight business trips.1 You cannot claim non-business driving or travel, fines or penalty charges, or travel between home and work.1
For a car, van or motorcycle you choose between actual costs (the business share of fuel, insurance, servicing and so on, plus capital allowances on the vehicle) and HMRC's simplified mileage rates.12
| Simplified mileage rates, 2026/27 | Per business mile |
| Cars and vans: first 10,000 miles | 55p |
| Cars and vans: over 10,000 miles | 25p |
| Motorcycles | 24p |
HMRC's starting point is that the cost of travelling from home to your place of work is not allowable, because it serves a private purpose as well: you have to live somewhere.3 It does not help that you sometimes work at home. HMRC's examples are a barrister who lives in the country and does some work at home but cannot claim travel to chambers, and a shopkeeper who does the paperwork at home but cannot claim the trip to the shop.3
So if you rent a workshop, studio, office or unit and go there most days, that is your base. Trips from home to it are commuting. Trips from it to customers, suppliers or other sites are business travel.5
Where your home really is the base of the business, travel from it to the places you work is normally allowable. HMRC's examples include an accountant whose only office is at home visiting clients, and an insurance agent with no office away from home.5
Tradespeople who move from job to job are "itinerant". HMRC describes them as travelling from home to a number of different places, each for the temporary purpose of completing a job, and gives a jobbing builder as the typical example; their travel between home and the sites is allowed.4 A subcontractor who works at two or more sites in a year can normally claim travel between home and those sites.5
The risk is one long-running site or client. HMRC says a subcontractor who works at a single site all year, as a normal pattern, can claim home-to-site travel only if home is in some real sense the centre of the business.5 Whether it is depends on the facts, such as where you quote, invoice, keep your tools and do your admin.
Usually not. HMRC treats food as a normal living cost, so lunch on an ordinary working day is not deductible.6 A deduction may be allowed for meals on a business journey where your trade is itinerant, or where you go to the place only occasionally and the trip is outside your normal pattern of travel.6
That answers a common question: if you work at the same client's office three days a week, your lunches there are part of a regular pattern and are not allowable. A one-off trip to a trade fair in another city would be different.
Overnight stays are the clearest case. Where a business trip needs one or more nights away from home, the hotel and reasonable meals are deductible, but not accommodation and subsistence at your own base.6
Priya is an electrician who quotes, invoices and stores her stock at home and works at different customers' premises. In 2026/27 she drives 9,000 business miles in her own van, pays £180 in parking at jobs, and has one two-day job 150 miles away with a £95 hotel and an £18 evening meal.
| Mileage: 9,000 × 55p | £4,950.00 |
| Parking at customers' premises | £180.00 |
| Hotel for the overnight job | £95.00 |
| Evening meal on the overnight trip | £18.00 |
| Travel expenses claimed | £5,243.00 |
| Tax and NI saved if her profit is in the basic-rate band (26%) | £1,363.18 |
Keep a mileage log with the date, start and end point, purpose and miles for each business journey, plus receipts for parking, fares, hotels and meals. If you use actual costs instead of the mileage rate, keep the fuel, insurance and servicing bills and work out the business percentage from your log. The log is the evidence HMRC will expect to see if it checks a travel claim.
55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or van, then 25p a mile. Motorcycles are 24p. The car and van rate was 45p before 6 April 2026.
Not to a regular place of work such as a shop, workshop or office you rent. That is commuting, even if you do some work at home. If home is genuinely the base of the business and you travel out to clients or different sites, those journeys are business travel.
No. HMRC treats meals as a living cost, and travel to the same place on a regular pattern does not qualify. Meals can be claimed on overnight business trips, and on day trips that are occasional and outside your normal pattern.
No, if the place is where you normally work, because the journey there is commuting. Parking on business journeys, for example at a customer's premises, is allowable and can be claimed on top of the mileage rate.
No. GOV.UK says fines and penalty charges are not allowable expenses.
Yes, if both are used for the business. Claim the business use of each one, and keep the method consistent per vehicle: once you use the mileage rate for a vehicle, you must carry on using it for that vehicle.
The rates, thresholds and rules in this guide are drawn from the official HMRC and GOV.UK sources below, using the confirmed 2026/27 figures. Each link opens the relevant official page in a new tab.
The sole trader tax calculator turns this guidance into a concrete monthly take-home and tax reserve estimate, based on 2026/27 HMRC rates. Enter taxable profit — not turnover.