Can you claim mileage for your commute?
No. Travel between home and your permanent workplace is ordinary commuting, and HMRC does not allow mileage relief for it. But travel to a temporary workplace is business travel, and that distinction is where most of the money is.
Updated 14 October 2026
Permanent versus temporary workplace
A permanent workplace is somewhere you go regularly to do your job for an indefinite period or more than 24 months. The journey there is commuting, whoever pays for the fuel.
A temporary workplace is somewhere you go to do a task or for a limited period. A two-week project at a client’s office, a site visit, a training course in another town: the travel to these counts as business travel, even if you set off from home.
The 24-month rule
If you are expected to work at one location for more than 24 months, or spend 40 per cent or more of your working time there for over 24 months, it becomes a permanent workplace and the journey stops being claimable. If a posting that started as short-term gets extended past that point, the travel stops qualifying from the moment you know it will.
Home workers and field workers
People with no permanent workplace (many engineers, care workers and sales reps) can often claim from home to each place they visit, because every location is temporary. Someone who works from home by choice, rather than because the job requires it, usually cannot treat home as a workplace for this purpose.
Getting it right in your log
Tag each drive as business or personal at the time, while you remember why you made it. Odomint’s mileage tracker records the drive automatically and leaves the business-or-personal decision to you, deliberately never guessing, because a guess either inflates a tax claim or hides money you are owed.
Examples that catch people out
A detour to drop children at school on the way to a client is not business mileage for the detour itself. Driving from home to the office to collect equipment, then on to a client, is usually only business from the office onwards if the office is your permanent workplace.
An employee sent to cover at another branch for three months is travelling to a temporary workplace, so those journeys qualify. The same employee permanently transferred to that branch is commuting from the first day of the transfer. What matters is the expectation at the time, not how long it eventually lasts.
Common questions
Can I claim mileage from home to my office?
Not if the office is your permanent workplace. That is ordinary commuting.
Can I claim mileage to a client’s site?
Usually yes. A client site you visit for a task or a limited period is a temporary workplace, and travel there is business travel.
What is the 24-month rule?
If you expect to work at a site for more than 24 months, it counts as a permanent workplace and travel to it becomes commuting.
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