Can you claim vat on your business mileage? Yes you can.

This does seem to come as a bit of a surprise to some people, but there are certain rules you need to follow to be able to do this.

You need to have fuel vat receipts from the petrol station, enough in value to back up your claim for vat against your actual mileage claim. These receipts should not be put through your accounts as they are only used to verify the mileage you say you have done. The vat element is calculated by using the advisory fuel rates, be warned you will need to check these monthly as they can change frequently.

You need to have detailed mileage records. To cover all the bases you should note down who you have seen with the distance travelled to and from the meeting.

Too much hassle I hear you say? Not so! Why not check out this cleaver application called Trip Catcher for your smart phone, you can also access it on your laptop, tablet or computer.

It does all the logging and calculations for you and even puts it into a nice spread sheet, and it also tells you how much your fuel receipts should amount to, so you can legally claim the VAT. This takes the stress away from you. How easy is that? Now you have no excuse.

All this for £1.49 per month. Bargain.

• Tip 1 don’t faff around with pen and paper to log your mileage just download Trip catcher
• Tip 2 Cycle to work? You can claim mileage for that as well but not vat, you get 20p a mile
• Tip 3 If you use Xero for your bookkeeping, Trip Catcher bolts directly into this making it even less painful for you to use
• Tip 4 Do you give mileage expenses to your employees? You don’t have to pay them 45p a mile, you can give them less and let them fill out a self assessment tax return or form P87 to get tax relief on the remainder. Be warned they will have to keep their mileage claim forms and prove they were paid by their employers to back this up.