The 24p and 20p rates almost nobody claims

Everyone knows the 45p car rate. Far fewer know that HMRC publishes approved rates for motorcycles and bicycles too, and that they behave differently in a way that works in your favour.

The rates

• Cars and vans — 45p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, then 25p
• Motorcycles — 24p a mile, flat
• Bicycles — 20p a mile, flat

The important word is flat. The 10,000-mile threshold that drops car mileage to 25p does not apply to motorcycles or bicycles. Ride 15,000 business miles on a motorbike and every one of them is 24p.

Why the bicycle rate gets ignored

Because it sounds trivial. It is worth doing the arithmetic before you decide that.

A four-mile round trip to a client twice a week is roughly 400 business miles a year. At 20p that is £80 of allowance for journeys most people would never think to record. If you are an employee whose employer pays nothing, that becomes tax relief on £80 — not life-changing, but it costs you nothing to have counted it.

For couriers, tradespeople doing local calls, or anyone in a city where the bike genuinely is the sensible vehicle, the numbers get considerably more interesting.

The same rules still apply

None of this changes what counts as business travel. A cycle commute from home to a permanent workplace is ordinary commuting and is not claimable, exactly as it would be in a car. The journey has to be travel in the performance of your duties, or to a temporary workplace.

You also cannot claim the bicycle rate for a bike provided through Cycle to Work, on journeys where the employer is already covering the cost.

Recording them

The evidence HMRC expects is the same whatever you were riding: the date, where you went and came from, why it was business, and the distance. That is the awkward part on a bike, because there is no odometer to photograph and nobody wants to stop and write things down.

Milesheet records the journey by GPS regardless of what you were on, so a bike trip logs itself the same way a drive does. Set the vehicle up with its own rate and the claim adds up correctly against the flat rate rather than the banded car one.

Sources

• HMRC — Travel, mileage and fuel rates and allowances
• HMRC — Claim tax relief for your job expenses: vehicles you use for work
• HMRC — 490: Employee travel, a tax and NICs guide

General information for UK drivers and riders, not tax advice.