What counts as business mileage
Business mileage is travel you make to do your job, not travel to get to the job in the first place. Driving from home to a normal, permanent workplace is ordinary commuting, and HMRC's own rules treat that as private travel, whatever your employer chooses to pay toward it. A trip to a client site, a temporary workplace, a training day away from your usual base, or between two of your employer's sites during the working day is business mileage instead. There is one wrinkle worth knowing: a workplace stops counting as temporary, and travel to it becomes ordinary commuting, once you have been attending it for more than 24 months, or expect to. This page logs the trips; whether a given trip qualifies as business mileage under your own employer's policy and HMRC's rules is worth checking against your own circumstances, especially near that 24-month mark.
How the UK's AMAP rate works
HMRC's Approved Mileage Allowance Payments give a single pence-per-mile figure that covers a business trip in your own car or van, without having to itemise fuel, servicing, insurance and depreciation separately. The rate is tiered by the tax year, not by any one trip:
For the 2026 to 2027 tax year the rate is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles a car or van covers in the tax year, then 25p a mile for anything beyond that. That 55p figure is a genuine change: it replaced 45p from 6 April 2026, the first increase to the car and van rate since 2011. Take a driver who logs 12,000 business miles across the year: the first 10,000 are paid at 55p, worth £5,500, and the remaining 2,000 at 25p, worth £500, for £6,000 in total, not £6,600 from applying 55p to the whole distance. The threshold resets every tax year and counts per employee, not per employer, so someone who moves job partway through the year does not get a fresh 10,000 miles from the new employer on top of what they had already logged with the old one.
Rates like this do change, and this page will not always reflect the newest figure the moment it moves. Check gov.uk for the current pence-per-mile figures before treating a result here as final.
Why the rate is worth more than petrol money
The AMAP figure is not a fuel allowance with a different name. It is built to cover the whole cost of using your own vehicle for the trip: fuel, but also servicing, tyres, insurance and the vehicle's own depreciation, folded into one pence-per-mile number so nobody has to submit separate receipts for each. That is also roughly why the rate steps down after 10,000 miles rather than staying flat: the fixed costs of owning the car, insurance, depreciation and the rest, are largely covered by the higher first-tier rate, and the lower second-tier rate leans closer to the running cost of the extra miles alone, fuel and wear rather than ownership.
The US IRS standard mileage rate
The US equivalent works differently: one flat rate per business mile, with no 10,000-mile step. For 2026 the IRS standard mileage rate for business use is 72.5 cents a mile, up from 70 cents in 2025, covering the same idea (fuel and the wear of running the car) in a single number rather than a claim built up from receipts. Unlike the UK figure it does not taper at any point in the year; every business mile is worth the same 72.5 cents, however many you have already logged. The IRS revisits this figure most years, sometimes more than once if fuel prices move sharply, so treat 72.5 cents as this year's number and check irs.gov before assuming it still applies later.
Keeping a mileage log that would hold up
Both schemes expect a record made close to the time of travel, not rebuilt from memory months later. HMRC generally expects the date of each journey, where it started and ended, the business purpose, and the distance, usually from an odometer reading or a reliable app; a full log by tax year is worth keeping even if your employer never asks to see it, since it is what you would need to claim Mileage Allowance Relief if they pay you less than the approved rate. The IRS asks for the same basics, date, origin and destination, purpose, and miles, but is more relaxed about odometer readings themselves: it wants a reading at the start and end of the year and whenever you start using a different vehicle for business, not one for every single trip. Either way, a log kept the same day or within a few days of the trip carries far more weight than one reconstructed at year end.
The passenger supplement, and other vehicles
Carrying a colleague who is also on a genuine business journey adds 5p a mile on top of the car rate, per passenger, under the UK scheme, unchanged even as the core car rate moved to 55p. Motorcycles and bicycles have their own flat rates, 24p and 20p a mile, with no 10,000-mile step at all; this calculator is built around the car and van rate, the one most people mean by "mileage allowance", so switch to a dedicated reference if you are claiming for a motorcycle or a bike.
Reading the annual projection
The annual estimate takes whatever you logged as one typical week or one typical month and repeats it across the year, 52 weeks or 12 months. Where it matters is the UK's tiered rate: a week that only reaches a few hundred miles sits nowhere near the 10,000-mile threshold on its own, but the same pattern repeated 52 times over a year very often does. This page works the yearly figure out fresh against the full projected distance rather than simply multiplying the period's reimbursement by 52 or 12, because the tiered sum does not scale in a straight line once the threshold is crossed; multiplying up would overstate the true yearly figure by paying the higher first-tier rate on miles that would really fall into the cheaper second tier. Treat the projection as a planning estimate built from one representative period, not a guarantee of what the tax year will actually bring.
Choosing between the three rates
Pick the UK HMRC option if you are claiming AMAP in Great Britain or Northern Ireland; the US IRS option for a standard US business mileage claim; and the custom option for anything else, a different country's published rate, an employer's own internal figure, or your own worked-out cost per mile. If you only want to know what a trip's fuel alone will cost rather than what you can claim back for it, our fuel cost calculator answers that instead; this page is about the reimbursement scheme, not the pump price.
Questions people ask
Does driving to my usual workplace count as business mileage?
No. HMRC treats ordinary commuting, travel between home and a permanent workplace, as private travel, whatever your employer pays toward it. Business mileage covers trips to clients, temporary workplaces, or between sites during the working day. A workplace stops being "temporary" once you have attended it, or expect to, for more than 24 months, at which point travel to it becomes ordinary commuting too.
Why does the UK rate drop after 10,000 miles?
The AMAP figure is built to cover the whole cost of running your own vehicle, fuel, servicing, insurance and depreciation, not fuel alone. The higher first-tier rate leans on covering the fixed costs of owning the car as well as running it; the lower rate after 10,000 miles sits closer to the running cost of the extra miles alone. The 10,000-mile threshold resets each tax year and applies per employee, not per employer.
My employer pays less than the published rate. Can I claim the difference?
Often yes, through Mileage Allowance Relief, claimed on a Self Assessment return or form P87 if you don't otherwise file one. That relief depends on your own tax position and a mileage log you can show HMRC if asked, so treat this as a starting point rather than a substitute for checking your own situation.
Does the US mileage rate have a threshold like the UK's?
No. The IRS standard mileage rate is a single flat figure, 72.5 cents a mile for 2026, applied to every business mile with no step down at any distance. The UK's tiering is specific to the AMAP scheme.
What records do I actually need to keep?
Broadly the same basics either side of the Atlantic: the date, where you went and why, and the distance, logged close to the time of travel rather than rebuilt later. HMRC generally wants this recorded per journey; the IRS is more relaxed about odometer readings specifically, wanting one at the start and end of the year rather than for every trip.
Do I get anything extra for carrying a colleague?
Under the UK scheme, yes: 5p a mile per passenger, for a colleague who is also making a genuine business journey with you, on top of the car rate. This calculator totals the distance and the driver's own reimbursement; it doesn't add a passenger supplement on top, since that depends on how many passengers travelled on which trips.
Is this tax advice?
No. This page shows how the published mileage rates and thresholds work and does the arithmetic on the figures you enter; it is not a substitute for checking your own tax position, your employer's policy, or the current rates on gov.uk or irs.gov.
This calculator shows how the published mileage rates work, not tax advice. Rates, thresholds and what counts as business mileage can change or depend on your own circumstances; check gov.uk or irs.gov and your own employer's policy before relying on a result.