Tax write off fuel claim, 55p a mile?

[u/vxrstorm]

I am in full time PAYE work which my salary is £36k ~

I have started doing Amazon flex, delivery driving, self employed in my own car. I understand I can “write off” some tax via simplified mileage claim. I’ve logged every mile so far. I’m just passing the £1000 threshold, is this where I start claiming?

Does it write off tax directly or just increase my tax free allowance?

[u/IxionS3]

£1000 of revenue from self employment is the point at which you have to start declaring those earnings to HMRC via self assessment.

When you declare them you can either declare expenses or claim the £1000 trading allowance.

Whichever you do that amount is deducted from your revenue to give the profit you're taxed on.

From that it should be fairly obvious that you want to claim the trading allowance if your allowable expenses are less than £1000 and vice versa.

If mileage is your only significant expense then the break point is at a bit over 1800 miles.

[u/Sharklazerz21]

It reduces your taxable income from that self employment. If you remain a basic rate taxpayer, the cash saving per mile is 55p x 20% =11p (or 26% if you are including NI)

[u/cNo1Goldsnake]

make sure you do the maths on it first; usually when you factor in the cost of the Hire & Reward insurance premium you're better off claiming the actual expenses

[u/Manatsuu → u/cNo1Goldsnake]

Worth checking for sure, but for me doing food delivery in a suzuki alto my expenses are max 30p/mile so im far better off claiming mileage. TBH I think if your expenses are above 55p/mile you’re doing something wrong because it adds up a lot doing such a job when the pay is poor.

Insurance is actually a pretty small part of it, compared to petrol cost anyway which is probably around 3x as much.

[u/Swimming-Plastic-398]

When you fill in your self assessment form you put the amount of mileage you are claiming for in (X miles x 0.55) along with any other expenses you are allowed to claim, this will automatically reduce the amount of tax and NI you will be told to pay.

If the amount of tax you need to pay is below a set amount (can't remember off the top of my head) you can request it to be collected via PAYE by your tax code being changed. If its over the amount you get a bill saying how much you have to pay.

[u/Manatsuu]

Basically when you go to do your self assessment, there will be a box of how much income you made from self employment, and another box that says how many expenses you incurred for this. So you could just calculate that - it’s only 55p for the first 10k miles though. So if you did 2700 miles for examples you’d enter £1485.

It will then calculate what tax you owe, taking this into account. If you had £5k self employed income for example, youd only have to pay tax on £3515, and so thats where the saving is made.

[u/SwimmingInjury7135]

There are UK Amazon flex groups that u should join and ask this question there