EIM21831 – Particular benefits: late night taxis: general overview

Section 248 ITEPA 2003

Where an employee is provided with a taxi paid for by his or her employer for a journey from work to home, this represents a benefit to the employee because journeys between an employee’s home and permanent place of work are private journeys [www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/490.pdf].

However, this benefit can be treated as exempt from charge if:

For the exemption to apply, these conditions must be satisfied on each occasion that an employee is provided with a taxi for a journey from work to home.

60 journeys per year

It is sometimes suggested that the exemption applies to the first 60 journeys in a year when a taxi is provided, regardless of the circumstances relating to the taxi being provided. This is not correct. Section 248 is not an annual allowance; it provides an exemption from the income tax charge that would otherwise arise on the provision of a taxi home. It can only apply when the late working conditions mentioned in the first bullet above are satisfied in full. The figure of 60 in the second bullet merely puts a ceiling on the number of journeys that can be treated as exempt from tax & NICs even where all the late working conditions are satisfied.

So an employee may be provided with a taxi from work to home once a week. Even though the total number of taxi journeys in the year is no more than 60, the exemption in section 248 does not apply, unless all the late night working conditions are also met on each occasion as well. Conversely, if an employee is provided with a taxi on more than 60 occasions in circumstances where all the late working conditions are satisfied, the exemption will apply only to the first 60 such occasions. The fact that the 60 journey limit is exceeded in a tax year does not disqualify any of the first 60 such journeys from the exemption.

Late night working conditions

There are four late working conditions, all of which must be satisfied –

- either public transport has ceased, or
- it would not be reasonable to expect the employee to use public transport ( EIM21834); and

Record keeping

As with any benefit or expense provision, employers who provide late night taxis home for their staff must be able to show that they have treated the provision correctly for the purposes of tax and NICs. Where an employer believes that the exemption in section 248 applies, he or she must have the necessary management checks in place and keep sufficient records to be able to show that the late night working conditions set out in the legislation are satisfied in all cases.

It is not sufficient for an employer to have a published protocol setting out the circumstances in which an employee can have access to the use of a late night taxi, if nothing is done to ensure that it is applied correctly and that the checking system the employer has put in place to do so is capable of audit. However, this does not mean that it is necessary for the employer to certify in advance the use of a taxi.

The procedure might, for example, take the form of the employer’s internal guidance for employees on the use of late night taxis along with an internal verification procedure that could be sampled to show that the qualifying conditions have been applied. That will not be the case where an employee is simply given access to a taxi service available after 9pm on call. HMRC would regard work to home travel by such means as subject to the normal employee travel rules. The fact that it may be outside “normal office hours” does not change that.

Failure of car sharing arrangements

See EIM10210 for information regarding transport provided to an employee when car sharing arrangements fail.

Transport provided for disabled employee

No tax charge arises where transport between home and work is provided for a disabled employee (Section 246 ITEPA 2003).