MilesheetParking fees you can claim, and fines you cannot
The line between a cost of doing business and a penalty, and the small print that catches sole traders and directors differently.
Both come out of the same wallet on the same day. Only one of them is deductible.
Parking fees: claimable
Parking while on a business journey is a legitimate business expense, and it is claimable separately from mileage. The approved mileage rate covers the cost of running the vehicle — fuel, wear, insurance, depreciation — not what you paid to leave it somewhere.
The same goes for tolls, the Dartford Crossing, the Severn crossing when it charged, congestion charges and clean-air zone charges, provided the journey itself was business.
What is not claimable is parking at your permanent workplace. That follows the same logic as commuting: getting yourself to your normal place of work is your own affair.
Parking fines: not claimable
Penalties are not an allowable deduction. The reasoning is straightforward — the tax system does not subsidise breaking the law, however routine it feels.
That covers parking tickets, speeding fines, and penalty charge notices, whether you were on business or not.
The bit that differs by structure
There is a wrinkle worth knowing if you run a limited company.
- Sole trader: the fine is simply not deductible. It comes out of taxed money.
- Limited company paying a fine issued to the driver personally: the company has effectively settled a personal liability, which can be treated as a benefit in kind or as earnings, with the reporting that implies.
Fines issued to the company rather than the individual are treated differently again. Either way, "the company paid it" does not make it deductible.
The practical bit
Keep the receipts for the fees and attach them to the journey they belong to. A parking receipt on its own is a scrap of thermal paper that will be illegible by August; a parking receipt attached to a recorded journey with a date, a destination and a purpose is evidence.
Milesheet lets you add parking, tolls and charges to a trip with a photo of the receipt, and carries them into your monthly statements alongside the mileage — so the claimable costs are itemised, and the fines are somewhere else entirely, which is where they belong.
Sources
- HMRC — Expenses if you're self-employed: vehicles
- HMRC — Business travel mileage for employees' own vehicles
- HMRC — Claim tax relief for your job expenses: vehicles you use for work
General information for UK drivers, not tax advice.