A self employed person can deduct travel that is wholly and exclusively for the business, but not the journey between home and a regular place of business, even if some work is done at home. The courts treat that journey as a consequence of where you choose to live. The exception is the itinerant trader whose home is the genuine base of operations and who moves from one temporary job to the next: their journeys from home to each job are allowable.

What travel can a self employed person claim?

GOV.UK lists the allowable costs for sole traders and partners as 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. It also lists what you cannot claim: non business driving or travel, fines or penalty charges, and travel between home and work.

The legal test is section 34 ITTOIA 2005: the cost must be incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade, with section 34(2) allowing an identifiable business proportion of a mixed cost. There is no statutory list of allowable journeys for the self employed. Employees are covered by separate travel rules in sections 337 to 342 ITEPA 2003, so concepts from employee guidance do not carry across. For the self employed, the answer comes from case law, summarised in HMRC’s Business Income Manual from BIM37600. For the general test, see the wholly and exclusively rule.

Why is the journey from home to work not allowed?

The leading case is Newsom v Robertson [1952] 33 TC 452. A barrister worked at his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn and also did substantial work at his home in Whipsnade, where he kept a law library. He claimed the cost of travelling between the two. The Court of Appeal refused it.

Denning LJ said you must first identify the base from which the trade or profession is carried on. For a shopkeeper it is the shop; for a barrister it is chambers. Travel between that base and other places of work is a business expense. Travel between home and the base is incurred because the person lives away from it, and is a living expense, whether or not they have a choice in the matter. Romer LJ said the object of the morning and evening journeys is not to enable a man to do his work but to live away from it.

BIM37605 draws out the consequences. Doing office work or keeping records and tools at home does not change the answer, and incidental costs of a home to work journey, such as parking and congestion charges, are disallowed with it.

What is the base of operations test?

The test asks where the business is actually carried on, looking at the nature of the trade and how it is organised. It was developed for itinerant trades in Horton v Young [1971] 47 TC 60. Mr Horton, a bricklayer, worked on building sites up to 55 miles from his home, usually for about three weeks each, kept his tools and books at home and had no site office. Brightman J held that his travel between home and the sites was allowable.

He drew a fundamental distinction between someone who travels from home to a shop, office or consulting room, and someone who travels from home to a series of different places, staying at each only for the temporary purpose of completing a job. He gave the example of a chimney sweep moving from house to house, and said the length of each job, two hours or three weeks, was not the test. He also set a limit: a commercial traveller living in London whose area was Cornwall could not claim the journey to the Cornish border. BIM37635 repeats that travel from a home outside the trading area is not allowable.

Does working from home make home your base?

Usually not, where there is a regular place of business elsewhere. Three cases show the limits.

  • Powell v Jackman [2004] 76 TC 87. A franchised milkman did all his paperwork at home and used his home address for all business correspondence, but collected his float and goods each day from a depot. Lewison J held that travel between home and the depot was not deductible (BIM37635).
  • Sargent v Barnes [1978] 52 TC 335. A dentist stopped at his own dental laboratory on the way between home and surgery. Oliver J held that the stop did not turn a home to work journey into a business journey; it added a purpose but did not remove the private one (BIM37630).
  • Samadian v HMRC [2014] UKUT 0013 (TCC). A consultant with an NHS job ran a private practice from a home office and saw patients at two private hospitals. The Upper Tribunal held that travel between home and the private hospitals, which were regular and predictable places of business, was not deductible, while travel between the two private hospitals and to patients’ homes was.

In Samadian, Sales J summarised the categories: travel for itinerant work is deductible; travel between places of business for purely business purposes is deductible; travel between home, even where home is used as a place of business, and places of business is not, save in very exceptional circumstances; and travel between somewhere that is not a place of business and a place of business is not deductible. The question of how much of the home itself can be claimed is separate, covered in working from home expenses.

How do itinerant traders differ from those with a fixed base?

Journey Trader with a fixed base (shop, office, clinic) Itinerant trader based at home
Home to regular base Not allowable Not applicable: home is the base
Home to a customer or temporary site Allowable if a genuine business visit and not merely on the way to the base Allowable
Base to customer or between sites Allowable Allowable
Home to a supplier on the way to work Not allowable (Sargent v Barnes) Allowable if a genuine stage of the working day
Home outside the trading area to the area Not allowable Not allowable (the Cornwall example)

HMRC’s own examples of itinerant trades are the jobbing builder (BIM37620) and the self employed travelling sales representative (BIM37635). What decides the point is not the label but the pattern of work: whether the trader moves continually from one temporary place of work to another, or has a fixed or predictable place where the business is carried on.

What about trips that mix business with pleasure?

Duality of purpose is fatal. In Bowden v Russell and Russell [1965] 42 TC 301, a solicitor who attended conferences in North America with his wife, intending also to have a holiday, lost the whole deduction (BIM37610). In Edwards v Warmsley Henshall and Co [1967] 44 TC 431, an accountant’s trip to an international congress in New York was allowed because there was no holiday purpose, and the claim excluded the extra days (BIM37615). Where business is the sole purpose, an incidental enjoyable destination does not spoil the claim.

How do you work out the claim?

For a vehicle used partly privately, BIM37600 says to allow the actual cost of business journeys and a proportion of fixed costs such as insurance and repairs. Alternatively, sole traders and partners can use the flat rate mileage method in simplified expenses. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year GOV.UK gives 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or goods vehicle and 25p after that, and 24p for motorcycles. Once you use flat rates for a vehicle you must continue for as long as it is used in the business, and parking and public transport can be claimed on top.

Illustration only. A mobile dog groomer working from home drives 8,000 business miles in 2026 to 2027, all between home and clients. Using flat rates the claim is 8,000 x 55p = £4,400, plus parking at clients’ homes. A dog groomer with a salon who drives 8,000 miles, of which 3,000 are daily trips between home and the salon, can claim only the other 5,000 miles, giving £2,750.

What mistakes come up most often?

  • Treating a home office as automatically making every journey from home a business journey. Samadian and Powell v Jackman show it does not.
  • Claiming the daily commute to a long term site or a rented unit.
  • Keeping no mileage log, which leaves no evidence for the business share if HMRC opens an enquiry.
  • Claiming parking fines, which GOV.UK says are not allowable.
  • Mixing methods for one vehicle, such as flat rate mileage and capital allowances on the same car.

Employees reimbursed by an employer use a different framework; see mileage allowance payments. For VAT on motoring costs, see VAT on cars, vans and fuel.

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Reviewed by Christine Anderson, Broker, Solar Protect. Last reviewed 8 October 2026. Part of Accountapedia, the Solar Protect guide to UK tax and accounting. This page is general information, not personalised advice.