Any Accountants out there?Tax payable on a company car?

As you know, Phoenix, I have been retired for a long time, but the rule used to be that your first visit and last trip home were not allowable on the grounds that everybody has to travel to work. However, I would certainly have allowed it for a long journey which would not be seen as
normal commuting distance, say more than 20 miles from home.

In the civil service we had to deduct our notional mileage. Ie, the home office home mileage. But if you have no office presumably you are peripatetic and your home is your office.

That's how I see it, Galen

Greatnan heaven knows how that will work with Penzance! So far I have been making around 5 to 6 visits a day close to each other, but sometimes with a distance of around 30 miles from home.

I may have to re-think this

Also what will happen when I have to go to Derby on Tuesday for a conference all day Wednesday? And to Enfield once a month for meetings?

Don't panic, phoenix!
I'm sure you can sort it out with your employer on Monday.

www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/490-chapter3.pdf
This might help: see page 21 which is about employees who cover a geographical area.

I always understood that, if you were making journeys direct to clients from your own home you deducted the home - office mileage from the first and last journey of the day , even if you did not go into the office first.

Yes, you could argue that your home is your office but that is usually for people who are self employed from home, not employees.

http://taxaid.org.uk/info/employee-expenses/travel-costs

This seems to suggest that you can claim for all visits but only if they are longer than the distance from your home to the office as Flickety suggested.

Many thanks to all of you for the responses, I will have a look in more depth tomorrow, although I must admit it's not looking good

If I had known all this, and given it more thought, then I would have planned the last five days worth of visits very differently.

Not sure if I'm really cut out for field sales jobs.

Phoenix, it always takes a time to settle into a new job, once it becomes familiar, including how car tax works, I am sure you will really enjoy it.

Phoenix don't you have any colleagues doing similar jobs, whom you could ask?
Hope it works out for you.

Thank you all, I will speak to a colleague tomorrow. (We were trying to catch up with each other for most of Friday, but having no signal on the company Blackberry doesn't help.)

It sounds as though you are beginning to settle in just fine and whizzing about - well done! I am sure the whole mileage/tax thing will get sorted.

In our business our guys are required to drive all over the country (sometimes overnights too) our accountant suggested (unofficially??) that the only private mileage should be the same distance from their home to the normal workplace ( in our case around 5 miles or so) Your case appears to be very much different and I agree with the fact that you could be at the very opposite end of the country for our first/last appointment which would be grossly unfair to count as private mileage. I am by no means an expert on such things but surely this must be extremely common. i would have thought the ONLY personal miles you should be charged tax on would be the ones you do on say a weekend or evening when you are not officially at work. If I were you I would have a word with colleagues if possible and make a call to local HMRC explaining the situation (giving the worst case scenario) and see what they say. Good luck Phoenix