Commute Mileage Rules UK: Ordinary Commuting vs Business Travel

The difference between ordinary commuting and business travel is one of the most misunderstood areas of UK mileage claims. Get the classification wrong and you risk either overclaiming — which HMRC can penalise — or underclaiming, leaving legitimate tax relief on the table.

This guide explains the legal framework, walks through the 24-month rule for temporary workplaces, and covers seven real-world scenarios to help you classify journeys correctly.

The legal framework: ITEPA 2003

UK commute and business travel rules are set out in the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, specifically:

• Section 338 — Travel for necessary attendance: you can claim travel expenses where your attendance at a place is necessary for performing your duties, and the journey is not ordinary commuting or private travel.
• Section 339 — Travel for temporary purposes: travel to a temporary workplace is allowable, subject to the 24-month rule.

HMRC’s detailed guidance sits in the Employment Income Manual EIM32000 series, which covers definitions, examples, and edge cases.

What counts as ordinary commuting

Ordinary commuting is any journey between your home (or a place that is not a workplace) and a permanent workplace. The defining feature is regularity and permanence — if you go to the same location as a matter of routine, that travel is commuting.

Key characteristics of ordinary commuting:

• The journey is to your main or permanent office
• You travel there regularly as part of your normal working pattern
• The workplace is not temporary in nature
• The cost of this travel is a personal expense, not a business one

Ordinary commuting is never claimable, regardless of distance. Driving 80 miles each way to your permanent office does not transform commuting into business travel.

What counts as business travel

Business travel is a journey you make to carry out your duties, or travel to a temporary workplace. This includes:

• Travelling from your office to a client site for a meeting
• Driving between two business locations during the working day
• Visiting a supplier, attending a conference, or going to a temporary project site
• Travel from home to a temporary workplace (subject to the 24-month rule)

The key test is whether the journey is to fulfil a business purpose beyond simply attending your normal place of work.

The 24-month rule explained

Travel to a temporary workplace is claimable — but the definition of “temporary” has strict boundaries.

A workplace is temporary if:

1. You expect the assignment to last less than 24 months, AND
2. You spend less than 40% of your working time there

Both conditions must be met. If you accept a 30-month contract at a client’s office, that location is your permanent workplace from day one. If you initially expect a 12-month project but it extends to 26 months, the workplace becomes permanent from the date you first know (or ought to know) the assignment will exceed 24 months.

The 40% test catches a subtler situation: even if a workplace is technically temporary, spending the majority of your working time there effectively makes it your permanent base in HMRC’s eyes.

HMRC’s guidance on the 24-month rule is in EIM32080.

When “temporary” becomes permanent

Here is where people get caught. Suppose you start a contract expected to last 18 months. You claim mileage to the client site for the first 10 months. Then in month 11, the client extends the project to 30 months total.

From the date you learn about the extension (or reasonably should have known), the workplace becomes permanent. You stop claiming mileage from that point forward. You do not need to repay claims already made during the genuinely temporary period.

The critical discipline is documenting expectations at the start. Keep the original contract or engagement letter that states the expected duration. If it changes, record when and why.

Seven scenarios that show the boundary

1. Daily commute to your main office

You drive from home to the same office five days a week. This is ordinary commuting — not claimable, regardless of the distance.

2. Six-month project at a client site

Your employer sends you to a client’s office for a project expected to last six months. You continue to have a permanent office elsewhere. Travel to the client site is business travel and the mileage is claimable.

3. Home-based worker attending occasional meetings

You work from home as your primary base. Once or twice a week, you drive to your employer’s office for meetings or to a client site. Both journeys count as business travel — your home is your permanent workplace, so trips to other locations are not ordinary commuting.

This is confirmed in HMRC guidance: where a home qualifies as a workplace (not just a convenience), journeys from home to other work locations are business travel. See EIM32174.

4. Travel between two offices during the day

You start the day at Office A, then drive to Office B for an afternoon meeting. The journey from Office A to Office B is business travel and is claimable. However, your morning journey from home to Office A and your evening journey from Office B to home are ordinary commuting (assuming both are permanent workplaces).

5. Site worker going to different locations daily

A construction worker who reports to different building sites each day, with no single site lasting more than a few weeks, is travelling to temporary workplaces. These journeys are claimable. Each site is temporary because the worker attends it for a limited period as part of a continuous pattern of changing locations.

6. Self-employed consultant visiting multiple clients

A self-employed management consultant works from a home office and drives to three different client offices each week. Since the home office is the permanent base, all client site visits are business travel and the mileage is claimable under AMAP or actual costs.

7. Secondment that overruns

An employee is seconded to another company’s office for what was expected to be a 12-month project. In month 8, the secondment is extended to 28 months. From the date the extension is agreed, the seconded workplace becomes permanent. Mileage claims stop at that point. The claims already made for the first 8 months remain valid.

Area-based and itinerant workers

Some workers do not have a fixed base at all. HMRC recognises two special categories:

Area-based workers have a defined geographical area as their workplace rather than a single building. A community nurse covering a specific district, for example, treats the whole area as their workplace. Travel within the area is part of the job; travel from home to the edge of the area is ordinary commuting.

Itinerant workers travel as an inherent part of their duties. A travelling sales representative who visits different customers every day has no single permanent workplace. Their home is typically treated as a base, and journeys to customer sites are business travel.

The distinction matters because HMRC applies the rules differently for these roles. If your job genuinely requires you to travel to changing locations as a core part of the work — not just as a convenience — you are likely an itinerant worker. See EIM32160 for HMRC’s guidance on travelling appointments.

Hybrid and remote working patterns

The growth of hybrid working since 2020 has created new classification questions. Here are the principles that apply.

Home as a permanent workplace

If your employment contract states that your home is your normal place of work — and you genuinely perform your duties there — then your home is your permanent workplace. Any trip from home to a company office, client site, or meeting venue is business travel.

However, if you work from home by choice or arrangement but your contract names the office as your permanent workplace, travel to that office remains ordinary commuting. The contractual base matters, not where you happen to spend most of your time.

Multiple permanent workplaces

An employee can have more than one permanent workplace. If you regularly attend two offices as part of your duties — say, your company’s London office on Monday to Wednesday and the Birmingham office on Thursday and Friday — both are permanent workplaces. Travel from home to either is ordinary commuting. But travel between the two offices during the working day is business travel.

The “substantially different” test

Sometimes employees are sent to a different branch or location for a short period. If this location is substantially different from your normal workplace in terms of journey, area, or character, and the posting is temporary, the travel may be claimable. HMRC examines the facts of each case rather than applying a bright-line distance test.

Common mistakes that trigger HMRC enquiries

Understanding what goes wrong helps you avoid problems:

• Claiming the daily commute as business travel — this is the single most common error. HMRC’s compliance teams know to check for regular patterns to the same location.
• Failing to update when a temporary workplace becomes permanent — if your 12-month contract extends past 24 months, you must stop claiming from the date you knew (or should have known) about the change.
• Not keeping purpose notes — a bare list of dates and distances is weak evidence. Adding a one-line business purpose to each journey makes the record far more defensible.
• Claiming mixed-purpose trips in full — if you drop the children at school on the way to a client meeting, only the business portion of the journey is claimable. Split the route and claim the business leg.

Practical classification workflow

Knowing the rules is necessary, but consistently applying them requires a process. Here is a weekly workflow that keeps records clean:

1. Review all uncategorised journeys every Friday (or at minimum, every week)
2. Apply your default rules first: home to permanent office = commute, home to client site = business
3. Flag edge cases — multi-stop routes, new locations, and changed contract terms
4. Annotate exceptions with a short note explaining the business purpose
5. Check the 24-month rule for any ongoing temporary workplace assignments — has anything changed?

Spending ten minutes a week on this prevents the January panic of trying to reconstruct and classify 1,000 journeys from the previous tax year.

Quick reference: commute policy template

For employers and self-employed workers, a short written policy removes ambiguity:

• Regular travel to a permanent workplace is ordinary commuting — not claimable
• Travel to client sites, temporary workplaces, and meetings at other locations is business travel — claimable
• Mixed-purpose routes must be split: the commuting portion is excluded, the business portion is claimed
• Temporary workplace claims are subject to the 24-month rule
• All business journeys require a brief purpose note

Related UK guides

• Mileage Claim HMRC: Self-Employed Workflow That Survives Review
• HMRC Mileage Logbook Rules: Recordkeeping Checklist for 2026
• HMRC Mileage Calculator Guide 2026: Split Rates Without Mistakes

MileTrack captures journeys automatically, classifies them as business, commute, or private, and exports claim-ready reports with all the fields HMRC expects. See the current UK product page at miletrack.app/en-gb.

Tax note: educational content only, not tax advice.