Subsistence (food & drink)

Conditions

• Food and drink are not normally allowable — everyone has to eat, so an everyday lunch at or near your normal workplace, or at home, is not a business cost.
• The self-employed can claim the reasonable cost of food and drink in two main situations: where the trade is itinerant by nature (for example a mobile engineer, sales rep or long-distance driver with no fixed base), or on an occasional business journey outside your normal pattern of travel (for example a home-based designer travelling to a one-off client meeting in another city).
• Where a business trip means staying away overnight, the accommodation and the reasonable cost of meals on the trip are allowable.
• For employees and directors, subsistence is allowable where it is part of a qualifying business journey to a temporary workplace; HMRC's benchmark scale rates can be used to reimburse this without keeping every receipt.
• Travelling to the same place regularly and predictably can make it your base, in which case the meals are ordinary living costs and not allowable. Costs must always be reasonable, not extravagant.

Common mistakes

• Claiming routine daily meals as subsistence.
• Claiming lavish or clearly excessive costs.
• Claiming meals for trips to a place you visit regularly — if it is a predictable part of your work, HMRC may treat it as your base and disallow the food.

What to keep

• Receipts and a note of the business journey they relate to.

Real-world example

A sole trader travels to a client several hours away and buys lunch while there. A reasonable meal cost on that genuine business journey is allowable; their normal lunch at home would not be.

Frequently asked

Related allowances