Claiming mileage in a van

Vans sit in the same band as cars, both for employees paid approved mileage and for the self-employed using simplified expenses: 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles, 25p after (for journeys from 6 April 2026; it was 45p before). There is no separate van rate, which is the first thing worth knowing and the reason the mileage rate suits some trades less well.

Why the flat rate can work against a van

The flat rate is a single figure for cars and vans alike. A van is generally not an average car. It is heavier, thirstier, harder on tyres and brakes, more expensive to insure commercially, and often working considerably harder than a family hatchback.

If you are running a long-wheelbase van at 28 mpg, loaded, doing 6,000 business miles a year, the flat rate may well be less than the vehicle genuinely costs you. If you are self-employed, that is the case where actual costs deserve a proper look: real fuel, real servicing, real insurance, plus capital allowances on the purchase. (Employees do not get this choice. Their relief is based on the approved rate.)

Against that: actual costs mean keeping every receipt and defending a business-use percentage.

When the flat rate stops covering a van

Approved rate against real running cost per mile (illustrative estimates, not measured figures):

Past 10,000 business miles the rate drops to 25p, which covers none of these. The bottom two rows, and any van doing high mileage, are where actual costs deserve a proper look, remembering that the choice is close to permanent for that vehicle.

Where the mileage rate tends to come out ahead

• High business mileage in a smaller, economical van
• The van was bought cheaply, or is old enough that capital allowances are largely spent
• You would rather have a simple, defensible number than a shoebox of receipts

The arithmetic is the same test as for a car: business miles × the rate, against real annual costs × business-use percentage.

The decision is close to permanent

Worth repeating, because it bites hardest here: once you use the mileage rate for a vehicle, you must keep using it for that vehicle. You cannot use the flat rate for three years and switch to actual costs the year the clutch goes.

For a van with a hard life, that is a decision worth making deliberately at purchase rather than discovering later.

Private use

If the van is also your personal transport, only the business proportion is claimable, and for employees a company van available for private use is a benefit in kind with its own charge. "It's a work van" is not, by itself, an answer to any of this.

Recording

Same evidence as any vehicle: date, from, to, purpose, distance. Trades doing many short drops in a day are easy to under-record, because stopping to write down a four-mile hop between jobs is not going to happen.

That is the case for recording automatically. Milometry logs each leg as its own journey, so a day of eleven drops arrives as eleven trips to sort rather than one vague total, and keeps each vehicle's economy and costs separate if you run more than one.

Sources

• Travel, mileage and fuel rates and allowances (HMRC)
• Expenses if you're self-employed: car, van and travel expenses (HMRC)
• Simplified expenses checker (HMRC)
• Simplified expenses if you're self-employed: vehicles (HMRC)
• BIM75005: simplified expenses, expenditure on motor vehicles (HMRC)
• EIM31240: statutory mileage rates, kinds of vehicle (HMRC)
• Increasing mileage rates (HMRC policy paper)
• Expenses and benefits: company vans (HMRC)

General information for UK drivers, not tax advice.