This information is published in IRS Publication 463 and establishes the limits for daily meal deductions that truck drivers. Pay drivers a per diem allowance. Rocks Pebbles And Sand Rarity.

Overnighting drivers using sleeper cabs still do not have to submit receipts for expenditure to claim a flat ‘night-out’ allowance if this has been agreed with their employer, the Road Haulage Association (RHA) has said – following apparent mixed messages from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) regarding the current position. Death On The Reik Pdf Printer. Historically, the RHA has negotiated a maximum night-out allowance with the tax authorities. This has allowed employers to make a tax-free payment to their drivers in compensation for spending the night in the cab, and has helped reimburse drivers for expenditure on bedding and consumables. The agreement simply requires the employer to be satisfied that the driver is spending the night away from the vehicle’s normal base and that he is therefore sleeping in the cab. But advice available in HMRC’s online internal manual as Transport Operator went to press suggested that “documentary evidence”, such as log sheets, expenses claims or receipts, would be required to secure the tax-free allowance – and according to the RHA, some HMRC inspectors have been demanding that employers get proof of purchases from drivers.

The association says this is “quite wrong”. Its lobbying has resulted in HMRC confirming that, the RHA says, “there is no change to the system.

Drivers have to be genuinely away in their cabs overnight – in a genuine subsistence position – but nothing further is required.” RHA director of policy Jack Semple added: “We have confirmation of that from HMRC, but HMRC inspectors have, in some cases, been imposing new demands on hauliers. And the website has been incorrect. It should have been put right immediately, and we have made that point to HMRC.” According to figures in its manual, HMRC currently allows lorry drivers to be paid £34.90 per night as a tax-free subsistence allowance when spending the night away from home. Where the lorry has a sleeper cab which the driver uses overnight, this figure drops by 25 per cent to just over £26.

Semple added: “The over-night subsistence payment is proper recognition of the realities of the road haulage industry – a sector that is vital to the UK economy – and HMRC should not be seeking to add to that burden of red tape in the way that it functions. More to the point, it has agreed not to do so – but appears to have failed to communicate that internally. “I fear that many hauliers, from the smallest to the very large, may have been told there are changes when there are none; that a more complicated system is being imposed, when that is not the case.” 45 comments •.

Typical of a governement department, so i have to get a receipt to prove i stayed away from base? Then we need another 50,000 lorry parking spaces at least, and nobody wants them built near them, instead of chasing drivers who are up against all the other issues why dont these idiots go chase the big catches?

Is it because its beyond their capabilities, IF drivers did not accept the rubbish facilities on offer to them (laybys etc) the subsidised (free) tax office coffe prices would have to rise. I am in US, it is strange that you would not stay in sleeper,we have a lot of truck stops here, some you have to pay.

I was an owner aperator & would use rest stops. I have driving over 1 million miles here, in over 30 years. Here in STATES I am handy caped & can not work as Company driver, Because of Insurance, it hard to get any work because of INSURANCE BARS ME from working. I had back surgery when I was 16 years old. I lurned to drive my self. I got my CDL when I was 25, I drove up till 1999 off & on for those years, I am 67 & still able to drive. Would have to get my M D card & I could, but I would have to Move to CANADA.Just to work, you do not have to fight this & it is sad.

You are lucky you get to drive. Same as Kevin above, been doing this job for 30+ years. Drove all over Europe, Middle East and UK. Used to stay away from UK as it depressed me to come back to what lorry drivers here have to put up with. To much red tape,everything to the letter of the law, sure coppers here like to make work for themselves! And treated worse than 3rd class citizens.

It says a lot about a country when companies won’t even let you use a toilet. Prisoners get treated better, What pittance we get soon goes back to the treasury with stupid courses teaching us to suck eggs. Now they want to tax us for sleeping. I,m beginning to think maybe it might have been better to have surrendered to Hitler and the Germans, after all what our forefathers sacrificed now we just give it away.

Its it that these civil servants are having to think up new ways to ruin our lives so they can enjoy theres. I have to laugh at your comment about companies not letting you use the toilet. I am English and arrived at a company in Cannock. I arrived to collect and when I went to the office to book in I asked if I could use the toilet obviously thinking it would be what we expect. He pointed to a portaloo in the middle of the yard. It was so tight getting in you was rubbing the filthy toilet with your jeans just to get the door shut.

And in case you did a s***, no running water and no soap. So I didn’t bother and waited to use the garage a few miles down the road after loading.

I have been driving for 25 yrs it is true the Europeans are treated far better parking is free and clean,families even use truck stops to eat they are that good!! We should be ashamed in the uk most services £23 to park with dirty washing facilities a meal voucher for kfc mcds or wot ever else maybe there so hauliers having to pay drivers night out fee plus parking fee in excess of £50 per night per truck and driver £££!you will find most uk services full of Eastern Europeans as I’m sure they just leave without paying!and we wonder why we can’t get new blood in the industry uk needs to get a grip we have took it far to long now. They do inforce Cabotage in this country. Citizen but work for a French company.

I can bring in 1 international trailer but once that is empty the clock starts ticking. We can then pick up from the port or change with other drivers 3 times in seven days and then I have to go out of the UK, in my case, Calais.

I then start all over again. I know simply because I was stopped by VOSA in Immingham and they didn’t fine me this time because it was my first time. They sent me out of the country to Rotterdam and then I returned on the next boat.

They warned me next time I am caught and not following Cabotage rules I will be fined and so will the company. Is it really this bad? I have dealt with drivers for the last 15 years as a shift manager ( not tramp drivers I must add ) but drivers that do 12 hrs on fixed runs, the full time drivers seem to moan much more than the agency drivers who in most part where not British.

I suspect that while the facilities in the rest of Europe are better the pay and currency of their home country is not strong enough to sustain their bills, and coming here the strength of the pound means more abroad than it does to us. I notice too that European companies have now opened their own depots here registered at Companies house as a British company but all invoices are done from abroad so tax is paid abroad and VAT accounted for abroad! I’m not an accountant but doesn’t that mean the company in Britain is making no profit and possibly a loss instead? I have for years considered getting my own truck and starting to build up my own transport company but I worry that red tape and legislation is still putting me off, plus I’m bloody skint LMFAO. Not true, only 20 in government hands as many were sold off.

Motorway service areas, also known as service stations and commonly abbreviated to MSAs are places where drivers can leave a motorway to refuel, rest, or take refreshments. Only 20 motorway services in the UK remain in the ownership of the Department for Transport and let on 50-year leases to private operating companies.[1] The vast majority of motorway services in the UK are owned by one of three companies: Moto, Welcome Break and RoadChef and a developing chain of stations being constructed by Extra. Some service stations also have hotels next to them offering motorists cheap overnight accommodation. Been doing nights away since 1970 including 6 months at a time driving Easton block and Russia. Still doing 5 nights out per week and the night out money is pathetic now but if they take the tax free away it would cripple the job (We are now unpayed night watchmen for upto 15 hours a night for a measly £30 ish) the jobs a joke now considering the fines and worse we get for a minor infringement like going 1 minute over your time which equates to not having 45 hours rest it’s about time we started to stick together like the French have done in the past instead of moaning about it in the unloading driver’s rooms (don’t get me started on them). What on earth next?

As a female HGV driver for 20+ years, I have been the most horrible places to try in find a female toilet & a shower facility. Facilities are very few and far between at the best of times, more so in Scotland. These places are almost extinct & they wonder why we are parked in lay-bys, industrial estates & other “inconvenient” places, as someone already mentioned we are night watch people & get very little for doing this. Yes I’d rather be at home every night, in my bed & using my hot shower the next morning, so the over night money should be higher & 100% tax free. Bet if the shoe was on the other foot, they would not do nights out in a truck No wonder the haulage industry is struggling for drivers, there is NO incentive at all. Why are we paid such a p*** poor pittance.

We spend time away from our homes and family. We are in soul charge of our loads. We are expected to protect these loads. We get no food allowance, have to suffer the noise of traffic fridge trucks and anything else that’s happening around us. We are treated as scum. The facilities in every service station in the U.K.

ARE ABSOLUTELY APPALLING.When will this be taken into consideration. Why because we are not considered worthy by the government the industry or our employers. It’s about time all drivers stuck together and demanded a fair pay and better working conditions. Bring this god forsaken country to its knees. It’s the only way to get what we are rightly entitled to. What a load of crap.

I’ve been doing this job for 5 years & hardly ever stop at our wonderful motorway services completely pointless having them unless you want crap food, p*** on your shoes or no toilet seat to sit on, let’s just stop trucking for a week ( in the summer) & make some demands see how they get on without us. I know it’s been done before in the 80’s so let’s do it properly, what they gonna do,sack us hmmm I’ll just get another driving job with my full cpc b*****ks & clean license I’m sure to find a crap job tramping, oh that’s what I do now.