Home based - making the most of travel expenses

[mr tommo]

Hi all,

I'm starting a new job in the next few weeks

It's homebased and so all travel and accomodation expenses are reimbursed fortnightly. I'm likely to be in London 2-3 nights a week and wondered what worthwhile rewards schemes you've used to take advantage of work expenses.

The first few weeks I'll be 5 days a week down there, train and hotel. I've seen the Hotels.com rewards scheme which looks pretty good but is there anything else I should be looking at? I'll be using quidco/topcashback for my hotel bookings.

 

[Selekt0r]

I do a fair amount of international travel with my job, but all our travel/hotels etc. has to be booked through our corporate agency, so no opportunity to use hotels.com . I do clock up enough airline miles, hotel and car rental points to get an almost free couple of weeks somewhere away with the Mrs each year though (California road trip last year)

Make sure you sign up for the hotel/transport brand loyalty schemes as well as hotels.com - not sure whether you'll always get the stay/miles credits if booking through hotels.com but worth a try. If you stay in the same hotel brand for enough nights then you'll get status/perks, higher points accrual, upgrades etc.

Secondly, make sure you use a cashback or other benefit-accruing credit card for all your expenses if possible.

Check in detail what your employer's Travel & Expenditure / expense policies are. If they permit 'per-diem' allowances then this is a good way to benefit, however not many UK-based employers seem to have these nowadays - they are much more common across Europe.

Obviously make sure you stay clearly in-policy - you want to be (and be seen to be) squeaky clean at all times.

 

[randomshenans]

Make sure you sign up for the hotel/transport brand loyalty schemes as well as hotels.com - not sure whether you'll always get the stay/miles credits if booking through hotels.com but worth a try. If you stay in the same hotel brand for enough nights then you'll get status/perks, higher points accrual, upgrades etc.

I've tried this, but they don't allow it. You either get one or the other due to the rates of the room.

As you mentioned though, get a BA CC or something, and use that for your expenses, pay it off but rack up some avios for your own personal use.

 

[mr tommo]

Thanks for that, hadn't thought about a cashback credit card

Worth a try with the hotel loyalty scheme too. I'm guessing I'll be moving around quite a bit in terms of hotels within the £150ish budget. Quite like the idea of the apartments on Hotels.com

The expense policy seems pretty good as we are left to sort everything ourselves although the hotel limit is £150 where possible (train, hotels + £25 evening expenses). Would be interested to hear if there are any train benefits to had as I'll be spending £1200 a month on trains.

I've tried this, but they don't allow it. You either get one or the other due to the rates of the room.

As you mentioned though, get a BA CC or something, and use that for your expenses, pay it off but rack up some avios for your own personal use.

Never heard of Avios but will take a look now ​

 

[randomshenans]

So it looks like Virgin have a loyalty scheme: https://www.virgintrainseastcoast.com/rewards/

Not sure if that's useful as I haven't looked into your journey, but that would give you the option to do nectar points (also used on expedia/sainsburys) or virgin air points. You could then also book your hotels on expedia to earn more, but you might have to look at the toss up between nectar and hotels.com for value vs. what you get back.

 

[randomshenans]

Right, so on nectar if you get the sainsburys CC, you can look at the monthly spend and get a rough idea of rewards directly from the CC.

Then on virgin, if you buy tickets there, you get 2 points for each 1GBP spent, so you can add that to the total. Then if you look at expedia and their rewards is a little meh, with 200 points per hotel booking but still... add it all up and work that out vs some of the others.

 

[mr tommo]

Nice! I've just checked the west coast one and it's the same. Might as well earn some extra nectar points as we already shop at Sainsburys.

I'll take a look at Expedia now, I've never collected nectar so it's all new to me.

The BA CC looks like a good idea as you said, the Premium plus has a £190 fee but you get 25,000 avios points with the minimum spend of £3000. I'm expecting to spend around £2-3k per month on expenses all in.

Are American Express still a pain to spend on? I've never looked at them but rememeber seeing signs years ago about not being able to spend in certain stores.

 

[texasjohn]

I was going to mention the train tickets. £800 a month worth of Nectar points being generated here.

 

[Selekt0r]

Are American Express still a pain to spend on? I've never looked at them but rememeber seeing signs years ago about not being able to spend in certain stores.

AMEX are fine for >95% of retailers, hotels, travel etc. I use them for all my work/expenses spend, and most of my personal spend as well.

 

[Housey]

Ive commuted to London from the Midlands for many years and spent lots of time in hotels. I have my Virgin Atlantic account linked to my Virgin Trains account which means each train mile equates to 1 air mile, though I travel first class and don’t know if it applies to all classes.

Today I book all hotels and travel outside of home to office trains via my corporate system and that allows me to set up all of my loyalty schemes, of which I’ve loads be they airlines, hotel groups, lounges and other travel stuff. If you are self booking and funding then set yourself up for rewards schemes and get something like Tripit that allows you to control them in one place.

 

[tom_e]

Check your contract in terms of benefits in kind as well, we've just been told we're no longer allowed to use any sort of loyalty scheme nectar points etc. when claiming expenses as it's classed as a benefit in kind for tax reasons and all those fun things.

 

[Lopéz]

Check in detail what your employer's Travel & Expenditure / expense policies are. If they permit 'per-diem' allowances then this is a good way to benefit, however not many UK-based employers seem to have these nowadays - they are much more common across Europe.

Obviously make sure you stay clearly in-policy - you want to be (and be seen to be) squeaky clean at all times.

I'm reasonably sure that one of the stipulations of per diem systems is that the employee should not benefit/profit from the system.

 

[Pudney]

Check your contract in terms of benefits in kind as well, we've just been told we're no longer allowed to use any sort of loyalty scheme nectar points etc. when claiming expenses as it's classed as a benefit in kind for tax reasons and all those fun things.

If it’s a personal credit card I don’t think it would be a benefit in kind.

 

[texasjohn]

If it’s a personal credit card I don’t think it would be a benefit in kind.

I don't think that makes a difference, you're essentially gaining a benefit on the back of the business. It doesn't matter whos card it is, it's the fact you're getting a benefit; tax free cashback as a result of your payment method for business expenses. That said, for the odd couple of quid here and there I think these policies are a bloody disgrace.

A mate of mine recently started a senior level job (Head of IT Security) where he gets a car allowance as a perk of the job. But, the company car policy limits the CO2 rating of what car he's allowed to use for work! How is that a perk of the job? Here's an allowance, that you won't see 40% of due to tax (fair enough), oh and by the way your choice of what you spend it on is restricted by a CO2 cap. So he's had to sell his CLS350CDI (hardly a big polluter, Euro VI engine with a DPF) as it was above an arbitrary 130g/CO2. I'd be inclined to go and get a jap import car that doesn't have an official UK emissions figure (taxation on engine size like the old days) if I was faced with such rubbish.

If it was a job need car then that's different, but as a perk of the job it takes the mickey a bit, particularly given that if you're a director at that firm the CO2 cap DOESNT apply to your perk-of-the-job car allowance. Anyway, I digress. Some employer expense and benefits policies go too far IMO.

 

[Maundie]

If it’s a personal credit card I don’t think it would be a benefit in kind.

I think it's a HMRC directive as it's a tax-free perk, it's why a lot of companies force people to use a corporate card system as it means they don't have the awkward questions from HMRC.

 

[Pudney]

I don't think that makes a difference, you're essentially gaining a benefit on the back of the business. It doesn't matter whos card it is, it's the fact you're getting a benefit; tax free cashback as a result of your payment method for business expenses. That said, for the odd couple of quid here and there I think these policies are a bloody disgrace.

A mate of mine recently started a senior level job (Head of IT Security) where he gets a car allowance as a perk of the job. But, the company car policy limits the CO2 rating of what car he's allowed to use for work! How is that a perk of the job? Here's an allowance, that you won't see 40% of due to tax (fair enough), oh and by the way your choice of what you spend it on is restricted by a CO2 cap. So he's had to sell his CLS350CDI (hardly a big polluter, Euro VI engine with a DPF) as it was above an arbitrary 130g/CO2. I'd be inclined to go and get a jap import car that doesn't have an official UK emissions figure (taxation on engine size like the old days) if I was faced with such rubbish.

If it was a job need car then that's different, but as a perk of the job it takes the mickey a bit, particularly given that if you're a director at that firm the CO2 cap DOESNT apply to your perk-of-the-job car allowance. Anyway, I digress. Some employer expense and benefits policies go too far IMO.

I think it's a HMRC directive as it's a tax-free perk, it's why a lot of companies force people to use a corporate card system as it means they don't have the awkward questions from HMRC.

I don't think reward points are a Benefit in Kind, particularly for personal credit cards where the employer has no control over the rewards.

Also, it appears HMRC agree with me, but even more widely (i.e. the same for corporate cards):

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim21618

In general, air miles, petrol tokens, credit card points etc. acquired by an employee are not taxable if they were acquired in the same way as applies to any other member of the general public, for instance by buying goods or services on which such benefits are given,

Provided the vouchers, air miles or points belong to the employee rather than the employer, they are not considered as being provided by reason of their employment even if the goods or services giving rise to them happen to be purchased as part of the employee’s business travel or using a credit card provided by the employer.

Situations where it may be different:

However, there is a tax charge on such items, if they are provided by reason of the employee’s employment.

This would be the case if the fact of the employment was a necessary antecedent condition to the receipt of air miles. An example of this would be where the employer purchased a block of air miles and distributed them to the employees, perhaps as part of an incentive scheme. Another example would be where there’s an arrangement for a third party to provide petrol tokens or some other form of award points specifically to employees of a particular employer but not to other customers.

 

[texasjohn]

Useful information, thank you.