Mileage Claims for Tradespeople: Plumbers, Electricians, Builders

Here's something that surprises a lot of van drivers: the HMRC mileage rate for a van is exactly the same as for a car. 45p per mile for the first 10,000, 25p after that. Doesn't matter if you're driving a Corsa or a Transit. The rate is per mile, not per vehicle type.

That's good news for tradespeople, because vans are thirsty and 45p goes further towards covering actual costs than it does for a small hatchback. But knowing the rate is the easy part. The harder question, and the one that actually determines how much you can claim, is which of your miles count as business.

If you're a self-employed plumber, electrician, builder, carpenter, or any other trade doing callouts, site work, and supplier runs, this is the guide that matters.

Multi-job days: each callout is a separate journey

A typical day for a reactive trades worker (a plumber doing callouts, an electrician on domestic jobs) might look like this:

1. Leave home, drive to first job
2. Finish job, drive to second job
3. Lunch break, then drive to a merchants for parts
4. Drive to third job
5. Finish, drive to fourth job
6. Finish, drive home

Every one of those legs is a separate business journey, provided your home is your base. That first journey from home to the first job? Business. The drives between jobs? Business. The trip to the merchants? Business. The drive home from the last job? Business.

Why? Because you're going to a different location each time. None of these customer addresses is your permanent workplace. They're all temporary. And travel to a temporary workplace is business travel under HMRC's rules.

This is where tradespeople who work from home have a massive advantage. If you don't have a separate workshop or unit, every journey from home to a job is business. Every journey between jobs is business. Every journey home is business. The whole day's driving is claimable.

The workshop commute trap

Now for the sting. If you have a workshop, lockup, or unit where you go every morning to load up the van before heading out to jobs, that changes things.

Home to workshop = commute. If you go to the same workshop every day, that's your permanent workplace. The drive there is ordinary commuting and it's not claimable. Same for the drive home at the end of the day if you return to the workshop first.

Workshop to job = business. Once you leave the workshop heading to a customer, that's business travel.

Home to job (skipping the workshop) = business. If you head straight to the first job without going via the workshop, that's not commuting because you're not going to your permanent workplace. It's travel to a temporary work location.

This creates an odd incentive. On days when you don't need to visit the workshop, you're better off (for mileage purposes) heading straight to your first job. On days when you do need the workshop (to load materials, pick up a specific tool) the workshop leg is a commute.

Some tradespeople try to restructure their mornings to skip the workshop where possible, loading the van the night before. That's a perfectly legitimate way to maximise claimable miles, as long as you're honest about it. If your mileage log says you went straight to a job but you actually stopped at the lockup first, that's a problem.

Supplier runs

Driving to a plumbers' merchant, an electrical wholesaler, Screwfix, Toolstation, or a timber yard for materials needed for a job is business travel. No ambiguity there. You're going to buy something for your business.

What about picking up materials on the way home? If you stop at Screwfix on your route from the last job to home, the whole journey is still business: you're making a business stop on the way. If you drive specifically to Screwfix from home on a Saturday morning to stock up, that's also business (assuming the materials are for business use).

One area people get wrong: personal purchases mixed in. If you go to a DIY shop and buy materials for a customer's kitchen plus paint for your own bathroom, the journey is still business, because the primary purpose was business. But the cost of the paint for your bathroom isn't a business expense. The mileage is about the purpose of the journey, not what's in the van.

Tools and materials in the van

A question that comes up regularly: "My van is full of tools and stock. Doesn't that make every journey business?"

No. The contents of your vehicle don't change the classification of the journey. Driving home with a van full of tools is still a commute if you're going from your permanent workplace. Driving to the gym in a van loaded with copper pipe is personal. The test is always the purpose of the journey, not what you're carrying.

Where tools matter is if you need to make a separate trip specifically to transport equipment to a job site. Driving to your lockup to collect a specific piece of kit, then driving to the job, involves a business journey from the lockup to the job. The home-to-lockup leg is still a commute if the lockup is your permanent workplace.

The 24-month rule for long-term site work

This one catches builders more than anyone. If you're working on a long-term project (a house build, a commercial fit-out, a refurbishment) and you go to the same site every day for months, the 24-month rule kicks in.

Under HMRC's temporary workplace rules (EIM32080), a workplace is "temporary" if you expect to be there for less than 24 months. Travel to a temporary workplace is business. But once you know, or reasonably expect, that you'll be at the same site for more than 24 months, it becomes your permanent workplace and travel to it is commuting.

How this plays out for tradespeople:

• A 3-month kitchen and bathroom refit: The customer's house is a temporary workplace. All travel there is business. No issues.
• A 6-month extension build: Still temporary. Business travel. Fine.
• A new-build project expected to last 18 months: Temporary at the start. Business travel. But if the project extends and you now expect to be there for 26 months total, it flips to permanent from the point you form that expectation. You don't lose the earlier months, but from that date forward, travel to the site is a commute.
• A subcontractor on a large development for 3 years: If you knew from the start it would be 3 years, it was never a temporary workplace. Travel to that site was never business.

The word "expect" is doing a lot of work here. It's about your reasonable expectation at the time, not hindsight. If you genuinely thought a project would be 12 months and it dragged to 30, your travel was legitimately business for the period when 12 months was your honest expectation. Keep your original contract, any extension letters, and project timelines: they're your evidence if HMRC asks.

Worked example: a plumber doing 4 callouts

Here's Dave, a self-employed plumber in Nottingham. He works from home: no workshop, no lockup. His van lives on his driveway. A typical Wednesday:

Total miles: 34. Claimable miles: 34. Every leg is business because Dave works from home and every destination is a temporary workplace.

Dave's annual picture:

• He averages 4 callouts a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year
• Average day: 34 miles
• Annual business miles: 34 × 5 × 48 = 8,160
• Add supplier runs (2 per week, ~12 miles each): 12 × 2 × 48 = 1,152
• Add occasional quote visits and one-off trips: ~400
• Total: roughly 9,712 business miles

Mileage claim: 9,712 × 45p = £4,370

All under 10,000 miles, so it's the full 45p rate. At the basic tax rate, that's £874 off his tax bill. Plus he saves the Class 4 NI on the same amount: another £583 at 6% between the thresholds. Total saving: roughly £1,457.

Now consider what happens if Dave had a lockup he visited every morning. That 6-mile first leg and the 5-mile last leg would become commuting on days when he went via the lockup. Over a year, that could cost him 2,000+ claimable miles: around £900 in lost claims. The workshop commute trap is real.

For the full breakdown of how the 45p/25p rate tiers work, see the mileage allowance worked example.

What about quoting and estimating visits?

Driving to a potential customer's house to give a quote is business travel. It doesn't matter whether you win the job or not. The journey was for business purposes: you were trying to generate work. Same for surveying a site before providing an estimate, or revisiting a job to check measurements.

These miles get forgotten because they don't result in income. But they're as legitimate as the miles you drive to do the actual work. Keep them in your log.

Emergency callouts

A midnight emergency callout (burst pipe, no heating in January, electrical fault) is straightforward. Home to the customer's address is business. The return journey home is business. Time of day doesn't change the rules.

If the emergency takes you to a supplier at 11pm (24-hour Screwfix, an emergency plumbing supplier), that detour is business too. The whole chain of journeys related to the callout is claimable.

Record keeping for tradespeople

Trades work generates a lot of short journeys. Four callouts, two supplier runs, and a quote visit in one day means seven separate business journeys. Over a year, that's well over a thousand individual trips to log.

Nobody is going to write those down in a notebook consistently. The tradespeople who actually claim their full entitlement are the ones who automate it: GPS tracking that runs in the background while they work, with classification done at the end of the day or the end of the week.

Your mileage log needs dates, start and end points, distances, and the purpose of each journey. "Job: Mrs. Patel, Beeston" is plenty. You don't need to write an essay. But you do need something for every trip, because HMRC can ask for your records at any point in the 5 years after the filing deadline.

More on what counts as adequate records in the mileage log guide.

The bottom line

Most self-employed tradespeople are entitled to claim somewhere between £3,000 and £5,000 per year in mileage allowance. Many claim far less because they don't track properly, forget about supplier runs, or assume the workshop commute is claimable (it isn't) and then give up on the whole thing when they realise it's complicated.

It's not that complicated. Work from home if you can, log every journey, classify honestly. The 45p rate is generous: it's designed to more than cover the actual cost of running a vehicle for most people. Don't leave it unclaimed.

All Premium features free until 5th April 2027 (end of 26/27 tax year). KeptMiles runs in the background while you work: GPS tracking, automatic journey detection, HMRC-ready exports.