It looks like I may need to arrange supporting a client in early-mid April. I’m just working my way through the likely costs – What’s a reasonable allowance for food, assuming that breakfast is already included with accommodation?

Don’t forget to factor in the cost of coke and hookers.

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-income-manual/eim05231

I get £30 a night dinner allowance. Breakfast included in the room rate. Lunch is my own problem. Travel paid for by business.

What’s a reasonable allowance for food, assuming that breakfast is already included with accommodation?

Allowance where I work is £20 for evening meal.

Those HMRC rates are ridiculous!

£15 for an evening meal? Wetherspoons for you laddie!

Our staff handbook has this to say:

Expenses and Subsistence with overnight absence
All reasonable out of pocket expenses incurred by employees when on business
will be reimbursed when it is necessary to stay away from home overnight. These
will include:
? Hotel bills as above
? Breakfast should be included in room rate. When breakfast is not included
in the cost of a hotel stay employees may claim no more than £10
? Lunch to a reasonable level (maximum £10) will only be reimbursed if you
have stayed away the previous night and are not working in [our]
office that day. Lunches for internal meetings where no customers are
present are not permitted.
? Non alcoholic drinks/light snack whilst travelling in excess of 2 hours may
be claimed if the employee needs to stop and take a break (maximum £5).
? Evening meal and beverages where customers are not present be limited
to £25 without reasonable justification.
? Other personal incidental expenses such as parking and toll roads to a
reasonable level. The Company will reimburse the costs of laundry/drycleaning
if the business trip exceeds five days. VAT receipts must be
provided to support claims.

We have preferred hotels near to each office, and a discount agreement with one of the big chains (Premier Inn I think, could be wrong).

We get paid actuals.

policy is ‘don’t take the piss’.

£15 for an evening meal?

Its pretty easy to manage when you are paying out of your own pocket

HRMC rates are if you want to pay an allowance without having to provide receipts etc.

Thanks, that’s broadly what I’d expected. Clearly the HMRC rate of £15 is “a bit out of date”.

Its pretty easy to manage when you are paying out of your own pocket

I was thinking the same

I forget what our official rates are, but I go on £10 for lunch, £25 for dinner, £5 for “incidentals” (coffee, etc) being reasonable.

Screw any employer that’s as tight as above over lunches – if they’re making me leave any earlier than usual on the first day of travel, I won’t have time to make any.

Yeah. It felt a bit weird when I first started needing to claim expenses, but the way I look at it is this. I’m doing work a favour by going out of my way, travelling, spending time away from home, sitting in a hotel room on my Jack Jones and so forth. If they’re going to begrudge me Wi-Fi, coffee and a bag of chips they can find some bugger else to do it.

We get paid actuals.
policy is ‘don’t take the piss’.[/I]

This.

Its pretty easy to manage when you are paying out of your own pocket

Maybe once or twice but I had a month in East London just before Christmas and £15 barely buys a meal in a hotel restaurant, nevermind drink.

We get a £120/day guidance on subsidence, which is too include food and hotel. In major European cities, this can be a bit more.

But, as academic we are largely just spending our own pots of money – so if it doesnt go round, thats one less trip to be able to go on!

One of the guys has just come back from a 10 day jolly business trip to Oz the hotel bill was $3350

Thanks, that’s broadly what I’d expected. Clearly the HMRC rate of £15 is “a bit out of date”.

It’s supposed to reflect the cost of having a meal. Which it is if you’re eating a normal meal in a normal restaurant in a normal industrial estate Premier Inn type place.

If you wanted to spend (and claim) more that would be a perk of your job (benefit in kind), and therefore taxable.

Once the initial novelty of having an allowance to spend has worn off, it’s actually bloody difficult to spend £15 every night for more than a few days without needing to join the Chub Club thread!

By the end of week 3 I was happy buying a salad to eat and spending the remainder on cakes for the office.

I had a month in East London just before Christmas and £15 barely buys a meal in a hotel restaurant, nevermind drink.

Barely. So it does buy you a meal like it’s supposed to? And drink is hardly a legitimate expense is it?

Daily subsistence allowance for the UK – £210 ( £259 for that London ).

You book your own hotel.

It’s supposed to reflect the cost of having a meal. Which it is if you’re eating a normal meal in a normal restaurant in a normal industrial estate Premier Inn type place.

If you wanted to spend (and claim) more that would be a perk of your job (benefit in kind), and therefore taxable.

no it isn’t. its the rate HRMC will allow you to be paid without submitting receipts.

I can, and frequently do spent considerably more than that and am not taxed on it. I do have to submit receipts, and its declared on my P11D.

It’s supposed to reflect the cost of having a meal. Which it is if you’re eating a normal meal in a normal restaurant in a normal industrial estate Premier Inn type place.
If you wanted to spend (and claim) more that would be a perk of your job (benefit in kind), and therefore taxable.

It not BIK – its going to be sitting in a strange city the week before Easter, over Easter weekend and the week after Easter working 13 days straight. My proposed thoughts on food are that its going to be a bit glum, therefore a more expensive meal is a small cost which hopefully encourages the person doing it to be slightly less glum.

just pay actual’s then and tell them not to take the piss.

We too have a “don’t take the proverbial” policy.

What that means in real life is that you buy your own lunch and put the evening meal on expenses. And if said evening meal happens to include a couple of pints then so be it.

Where I work it is –
£10 for breakfast (only if you leave home before 6.30am)
£10 for lunch
£20 allowance for evening meal, can include 1 alcoholic drink

Hotels are booked by the company through a travel agent, max of approx. £70-75 per night which often even puts Premier Inn’s out of budget so they will book a room only with no breakfast (nonsensical as I then claim breakfast back under above rules anyway so they aren’t actually saving anything)

£20 for an evening meal can prove tricky when you are relying on hotel restaurants with nothing else around (our work is often in quite remote locations)

I once travelled to a meeting leaving the house at 5am (and got back well after 9pm), because of heavy traffic on the way down I ended up pushed for time so didn’t have time to stop for anything to eat until 3pm at which point I had a burger and chips from Gloucester services, a bottle of water with the meal took me to £10.43 and my subsequent claim got refused. I was told I had to get approval for the extra 43p from the group finance director
This was the same day the company (a large multi-national) had issued their second rather large profit warning of the year, I don’t think my 43 pence would have been his top priority and sorting it would definitely have cost more than a few pence!
It really annoyed me as I could easily have booked a hotel and gone down the day before, and even stayed over the night after, which many more senior people in our place would have done so instead of a possible £190 odd of expenses they split hairs over 43p
Until then I was not fussed by claiming everything back, since they pi$$ed me about I now make sure I always get as close to the maximum allowances regardless even if it involves sticking receipts in for bags of crisps etc

Our policy is:

£10 for breakfast
£10 for lunch only payable if away for more than 24 hours
£25 for evening meal

Plus £25 per night for staying away fro more than 3 nights.

Plus hotel up to £150.

£25 allowance for dinner. As others have mentioned its pretty hard to spend that night after night

I get hotel, breakfast and a 3 course meal with one drink and £15 for entertainment.

We get paid actuals.

policy is ‘don’t take the piss’.

+1.

My manager generally looks at the overall cost of the trip – if you’ve found a budget hotel he’ll not be bothered if you’ve done £40 on dinner.

I was told I had to get approval for the extra 43p from the group finance director

That sort of asshattery always makes me laugh. It’s cost the company more than 45p in wages by rejecting it even before the Director has anything to do with it (and does the Director not have anything better to do?)

Until then I was not fussed by claiming everything back, since they pi$$ed me about I now make sure I always get as close to the maximum allowances regardless even if it involves sticking receipts in for bags of crisps etc

Mate of mine does this, has a bit of a game to try and get it to the nearest penny. Probably earns three times what I do too, could peel an orange in his pocket that boy.

First job out of uni in mid 2000s was £35 food and board, you could barely stay in a crack den for that.

We get a £120/day guidance on subsidence

Sounds like you’re on shaky ground there.

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Claiming actuals seems to be standard these days, I much preferred just getting a fixed sum and spending more or less than that depending how I felt. As long as the fixed sum was reasonable, that is (which was not always the case, but overall it worked out ok over the years). Collecting every piddling receipt on a week long trip is pretty annoying expecially as it’s almost impossible to get all of them eg public transport that swallows spent tickets without warning, shared meals where several people need the receipt…

Back to the point. I recently quoted $50 per day as an estimate for meals (including breakfast), and that worked out quite reasonably when it came to doing the claim.

think ours works out at around £48 per night spent away. No need to put receipts etc in, just claim the daily allowance (company expense system does it all for you). We are supposed to stay in company approved hotels booked through the company system (usually they have preferred rates/rooms that are defaulted to) but if we’re on a longer term project we have the option of sorting out our own accommodation (once we have got authorisation).

As such I’m currently using AirBnB and staying in some lovely apartments (and some not so great) and having a much nicer time of it. It works out no more expensive than the company hotels (usually quite a bit cheaper) and I get to actually cook and make my own lunch to take into work if I can be bothered plus I still get the same daily allowance.

My employer will not pay any food or drink expenses for travel within the UK.

Be grateful your employer isn’t HMRC…. 🙄

I am on the hmrc rates 🙁

I’m allowed £65 for hotel/b&b, plus breakfast.

It can work – I was in Aberdeen Hilton last night for £61 with breakfast, however the evening meal was sh*te served in a chain pub.

It’s more the meals I struggle with.

Barely. So it does buy you a meal like it’s supposed to? And drink is hardly a legitimate expense is it?

Main course and a desert plus a soft drink and coffee to finish. Won’t get that for £15 in a Beefeater (which are attached to many Premiers).

And why can’t I have an alcoholic drink, or more. I would at home so why not when working away?

Although for me it’s irrelevant now as I work for myself so I put whatever I want on the bill – in the past though I’ve had many arguments with bean-counters over expenses. Never lost a penny, there’s always a way 🙂

I’m allowed £65 for hotel/b&b, plus breakfast.

I think in about 2002 I was 50 quid dinner B&B

Whoever is down on the 15 quid all in dinner must travel to some strange places. Warrington was my usual destination – after a long drive the only real option (6-7 years ago) was something off the room service menu coming in about 20 quid. After that if the restaurant was open hard to go under 20 quid for even a salad with something else. McD’s is not somewhere I’d like to be forced to eat on expenses.

Again 7 years ago we were looking at 100/night Dinner B&B and that was only possible with a good hotel rate, could easy get to 110. I hear things have got more expensive since then.

I agree mikewsmith, and I’m not expecting huge amounts, we are a charity.
However the powers that be rarely travel as I and a colleague do, and the FD when last traveling was happy to treat it as a jaunt – hubby came along and they paid for nice meals together.
New CEO in a couple of months, so one of my gripes will be aired…