Travel to a temporary workplace: HMRC's 24-month rule explained

Your drive to the office is your own business, in the strictly non-business sense. HMRC calls it ordinary commuting and gives no tax relief for it, however early the alarm goes off. Send the same employee to a client's site for a few months, though, and the mileage, the parking and the sandwich at the services can all qualify.

The line between the two is the temporary workplace, and the rule that decides how long "temporary" lasts is HMRC's 24-month rule. Here is how it works, using HMRC's own examples.

Permanent or temporary?

A permanent workplace is somewhere you attend regularly to do your job. Travel between home and a permanent workplace is ordinary commuting: no relief, even if your employer asks you in at the weekend.

A temporary workplace is somewhere you go only to do a task of limited duration, or for a temporary purpose. That holds even if you go there regularly. A safety officer who checks the same factory every week for twenty years still has a temporary workplace there in HMRC's example, because each visit is a self-contained job.

Travel between home and a temporary workplace qualifies for relief on its full cost. You do not have to knock off the commute you saved by not going to the office; HMRC's guide says so in terms. (Some employers' policies pay only the extra miles. That is their choice, not a tax rule.)

The 24-month rule

A workplace that would otherwise be temporary is treated as permanent if you spend, or are likely to spend, 40% or more of your working time there over a period that lasts, or is likely to last, more than 24 months. Both halves have to be met.

The test runs on expectation, not hindsight. What counts is what you were told about the posting, and the answer changes on the day that expectation does.

Two things catch people out. The share is of your working time, so a part-timer can hit 40% with one day a week. And a posting that ends early does not rescue the earlier months: told 28 months, the site was permanent all along.

Breaks do not reset the clock

A gap in attendance does not start a fresh 24 months. In HMRC's example a labourer spends 18 months on an airport terminal, six months elsewhere, then returns for a 12-month second phase. He now expects to spend 30 of 36 months there, so the site is a permanent workplace for those final 12 months. A colleague who returns for one day a week, about 31% of his working time over the whole period, keeps it temporary.

Other rules that turn a site permanent

The 24-month rule is the famous one, but not the only one:

• Fixed-term contracts. If you are taken on for a fixed term and spend 40% or more of your time at one place for all or almost all of it (HMRC reads that as more than 80%), that place is permanent. An 18-month contract at one site gets no relief for the daily trip there.
• Depots and bases. If you report to a depot each morning to collect a van or your job list, the depot is a permanent workplace, however short the visit. An electrician who calls in for the day's jobs commutes to the depot; a plumber who drops by most Wednesdays for piping does not.
• Agencies, umbrellas and personal service companies. If you work through an intermediary and the work is similar to an employee's, each assignment is treated as a separate employment, so the daily trip to the client is ordinary commuting. Contractors, take note.
• Substantially the same journey. If the trip to a temporary workplace is much the same as your normal commute, there is no relief. HMRC says it will not normally argue this where the extra distance is 10 miles or more each way.

Hybrid working does not make home a workplace

Choosing to work from home part of the week does not make the office temporary. Under hybrid working, HMRC says, the office remains your permanent workplace and the trip there is commuting. Relief only arises where working at home is an objective requirement of the job rather than a preference, and then only on the days home is a workplace.

Meals and overnight stays

Travel expenses include subsistence. When you travel to a temporary workplace you can get relief for:

• meals bought on the journey, and meals you have to buy while at the temporary workplace
• accommodation and necessary meals when you need to stay overnight, even for a long stint

The cost must come from the trip. HMRC's own example: a station sandwich bought while travelling qualifies; the packed lunch you made at home does not, however precisely you price it.

Instead of reimbursing receipts, employers can pay meal allowances tax and National Insurance free at HMRC's benchmark rates, for qualifying journeys that are not substantially ordinary commuting:

A further £10 can be paid on top of the £5 or £10 rate where the journey runs past 8pm. The employee must still have bought a meal after setting off. Employers can pay less; paying more without a bespoke agreement with HMRC makes the excess taxable.

For driving your own car or van, the approved mileage rate covers the running costs: 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in 2026/27, then 25p. HMRC mileage rates explained covers that in full. Parking and tolls on a business journey are claimed on top.

If you are self-employed

The 24-month rule is an employee rule. Sole traders and partners cannot claim travel between home and work, and day-to-day meals are not normally allowable, because everyone has to eat. HMRC allows them only for itinerant trades or occasional journeys outside your normal pattern, plus hotels and reasonable meals on overnight trips. Allowable expenses for sole traders has the wider list.

Claiming it

If your employer has not repaid the cost, you can claim tax relief from HMRC for the current tax year and the four before it, or on your return if you file Self Assessment. Hotel and meal claims need receipts showing the date and the hotel or restaurant's name. How long to keep receipts for HMRC covers the rest of the paperwork.

Where a posting is borderline, write down what you were told about its length, and when that changed. Under a rule built on expectations, a dated note beats a confident memory.

How ClaimSnappy helps

We built ClaimSnappy's journey checks around these rules, so the awkward questions come up while you can still answer them.

• The 24-month rule. When you keep travelling to the same place, the app counts those visits against all your travel days. Once a run reaches 18 months and the place takes 40% or more of them, it flags that the site may be becoming a permanent workplace and shows the date 24 months is reached. The app sees travel days, not your working time, so treat it as a prompt to check, not a ruling.
• Commuting. A journey from home whose reason names your own office or depot is flagged as possible commuting. If your employer's policy pays only the extra miles, the trip form can take off your usual commute when a journey starts or ends at home.
• Meals. A meal receipt on a day with no journey, fare or hotel is flagged, because subsistence follows the travel.

The app turns your journeys and receipts into a claim for you to check and send; on a team desk it can go to your manager for approval first. Each journey is priced at the approved rate for its own tax year. You can download any claim as a PDF and CSV with its receipt files, and an accountant who links up through the free accountant portal can export your records as import files for Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage 50. See how it works if you claim for yourself or run expenses for a team.

ClaimSnappy keeps the records and raises the flags. Whether a particular site is temporary is for you, your employer and, if it comes to it, HMRC to settle. If the facts are messy, an accountant is cheaper than an enquiry.