SE62640 - Tax treatment of engineering design employees: guidelines issued by the Federation of Engineering Design Companies - taxation of travelling expenses continued

b. A wide variety of circumstances will be encountered in practice, and at the opposite end of the spectrum from the previous example will be the employee who only spends a few weeks a year in his own employer’s office, and for the rest of the time is working at a single site or series of different sites. As he is rarely in his employer’s office, this is in no sense his normal place of employment, and he cannot therefore be temporarily absent from it on detached duty when at the client’s premises; rather the place where he is working for the time being is his normal place of employment, even if he moves to a new site every few months. He will not be able to obtain payment of his travelling expenses without deduction of tax because he could not make a valid claim to relief under Section 198(1).