Two jobs, one car: which journeys count

More people hold two jobs than the tax rules were originally designed around, and the travel between them is where the confusion sits.

The default: each job has its own commute

If you work for two unconnected employers, the journey from home to each of them is ordinary commuting for that employment. Neither is claimable.

That includes the awkward middle case: finishing at job A, driving to job B. Even though it feels like a working journey rather than a commute, if the two employers are unconnected it is generally treated as commuting to the second job, not travel in the performance of duties for the first.

The exception: connected employers

Where the two employments are with connected employers — companies under common control, for example — travel between the two workplaces can be business travel rather than commuting.

This is the case most likely to be missed by people who work across a group, or who hold roles in two companies with the same owner. Those journeys can be claimable, and often are not claimed because they feel like commuting.

The temporary workplace overlay

Everything from the 24-month rule still applies on top. If one of the two workplaces is genuinely temporary — a short assignment, a site with a defined end — travel to it may be claimable regardless of the other job.

Two tests, applied in order: is this workplace permanent or temporary for this employment, and if permanent, is the journey commuting or travel between connected employments.

Why this argues for recording everything

The pattern here is that the same physical journey can be claimable or not depending on facts that are not visible from the road: who employs whom, whether an assignment is expected to run past two years, whether an employer is connected to another.

Those facts can also change after the journey. A contract extends; a company is acquired; a temporary site becomes the permanent base.

If the journey was never recorded, none of that helps you. If it was recorded and classified, changing the classification later is trivial and the underlying evidence still holds.

That is the argument for logging everything and deciding afterwards, rather than deciding at the roadside whether a drive is worth writing down.

Sources

• HMRC — 490: Employee travel, a tax and NICs guide
• HMRC — Employment Income Manual EIM31815: temporary workplace
• HMRC — Claim tax relief for your job expenses: vehicles you use for work

General information for UK drivers, not tax advice. Connected-employer cases turn on the detail: take advice before relying on one.