EIM05220 - Employment income: scale rate expenses payments: subsistence expenses: sampling guidance: sampling exercise incomplete

HMRC accepts that it may not be possible for an employer to ensure that all the selected employees keep their receipts (or produce a contemporaneous record of their expenses) for the whole of the sampling period. There will be cases where the employer obtains responses from less than 100% of the chosen employees, and others where the expenditure is not 100% vouched.

A sample which is less than 100% complete may nevertheless contain sufficient information to be statistically valid. Officers should not automatically reject the evidence of a sampling exercise which falls slightly short of “10% for a month” (see EIM05210). This is an area where judgement is needed. The officer has to decide whether, having regard to

• the number of eligible employees
• the size of the 10% sample and
• the amount of evidence actually produced

he or she can be satisfied that the evidence produced is sufficient to support a scale rate subsistence payment of a particular amount.