Can i claim my petrol back on my own?

Should i claim VAT back on petrol?

• I am a manager for betterware and was wanting to know should i register for VAT and claim back VAT on my petrol, if i was what would i need to do. would i need to keep all petrol receipts, log the miles i do for business and claim back 45p per mile? Hope you can help

• Answer:

  Firstly, are you self-employed? If not you can't be registered for VAT full stop. So don't bother reading the rest of the answer. If you are deemed to be self-employed then (ignoring the VAT for a bit) you have 2 choices when claiming expenses for mileage. 1) You can claim 45p per mile in the same way as employees can. But if you do this all the motoring expenses (petrol, insurance, tax, servicing, etc) cannot also be claimed. Essentially you pay these "personally". 2) You can keep track of all your actual expenses and deduct a fraction that reflects the fraction of your total miles that are incurred for business purposes. You don't necessarily need to keep track of every single mile you drive, but you need to be able to defend whatever figure you choose. If you decide that 25% of your miles are for business use then you can claim 25% of each fuel bill, MOT, tax, servicing, etc. If you are VAT registered then you can reclaim any VAT that you pay out. In the first example HMRC publish an element of the 45p per mile that is deemed to be due to fuel, and there are some complicated calculations that enable you to reclaim some of the VAT on this. In the second example each bill will have VAT added and you can claim the relevant amounts. You may also be paying VAT on other goods and services that you pay for for your business, so this can be reclaimed as well. BUT, you also need to add VAT to anything you charge you customers / clients. I assume that you get paid commission by Betterware on everything sold by yourself and the team under you? If you are self-employed these will technically be charges for your services that you invoice Betterware for. If you are VAT registered then these charges will need to have VAT added or included. I have a strong suspicion that Betterware won't pay you any extra for VAT on top - I bet somewhere in your agreement will be a term that says the commissions paid include VAT where relevant. Which means you will lose a big chunk of your income because it will be VAT you have to pay. So, while you could register for VAT and reclaim a small amount of your fuel expenses, you will almost certainly lose out by having to account for VAT out of your commission.