Claiming PAYE back for travelling for work

denhamd2 · 08-01-2006 01:59AM #1

A friend of mine who has his own business told me that for every 1 mile you travel for work when self-employed using your own personal car, you can claim back €1 of PAYE, so essentially if you drove from Dublin to Cork every week you wouldnt have to end up paying PAYE, sounds dodgy I know. If theres anyone who know about accountancy out there please could you tell me if this is true or not?

BrianD · 08-01-2006 02:52AM

He's wrong but there is some truth to it.

You can use travel has a tax deductable expense. You'd have to consult the revenue about this. Basically you'd charge yourself a mileage rate for the use of your private car. This would be considered as a business expense.

Kinetic^ · 08-01-2006 03:27AM

denhamd2 wrote:

A friend of mine who has his own business told me that for every 1 mile you travel for work when self-employed using your own personal car, you can claim back €1 of PAYE, so essentially if you drove from Dublin to Cork every week you wouldnt have to end up paying PAYE, sounds dodgy I know. If theres anyone who know about accountancy out there please could you tell me if this is true or not?

If you're a sole trader and you're using your own car for the business then you can claim a certain amount of expenses (say 30% of all petrol,service etc.) for the year against your income.

So say you've got a profit of €1000 and you're car expenses are €1000.
Then 30% of your car expenses can come off your profit, so you'll then have a taxabale profit of €700.

The % will depend on how much you use it for your business. You can submit it without consulting the revenue, but if you get an audit they might decide on a different %, so make sure its reasonable.

Claiming PAYE back for travelling for work

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