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Parking

Last checked 8 October 2026 · HMRC source · 23 sources behind this page

Paying to park on a business journey is an allowable expense: GOV.UK lists parking among the travel costs a sole trader can claim, and HMRC treats car parking as an incidental cost that can form part of an employee's deductible business journey. Parking on the journey between home and work is not allowable — HMRC disallows the incidental costs of that journey and names car parking directly (BIM37605). A fine is a third case: a fine for an infraction of the law is not incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade (BIM42515), though the same guidance sets out when an employer that meets a fine which is its employee's own liability may still deduct the cost.

Conditions

1. GOV.UK's self-employed expenses guidance lists parking among the car, van and travel costs a sole trader or individual in a business partnership can claim as allowable business expenses. The same guidance lists fines or penalty charges and travel between home and work among the costs you cannot claim.
2. For both sole traders and companies the test is statutory. S34(1)(a) ITTOIA 2005 for unincorporated businesses and S54(1)(a) CTA 2009 for companies allow no deduction, in calculating the profits of a trade, for expenses not incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade (BIM37035). HMRC describes this as a two-stage approach: whether the expense is capable in law of satisfying the rule, and whether as a question of fact it was so incurred. For a company, HMRC states the general rule for amounts paid to employees, including directors: normal employee costs are allowable, but a variety are not, including employee costs that are capital, dividends paid to employees, and 'excessive' remuneration, including remuneration paid to obtain a fiscal advantage (BIM37700). Where an expense is linked to the personal interests of a director and is taxable on the director as part of their remuneration package, HMRC says to allow the company the deduction as part of the costs of employing the director (BIM47107). That guidance states the general rule and does not deal with parking specifically, and a fine the company pays is a separate case, set out below.
3. Parking on the journey between home and work is not allowable. HMRC states that the cost of travelling between home and work includes the incidental costs of such a journey, including (for example) car parking and congestion charges, and that all such incidental costs are disallowable where the purpose (or one purpose) of the journey is to travel from home to place of work (BIM37605).
4. Where the trade is genuinely itinerant the home-to-work bar can fall away. HMRC states that where an itinerant trader's base of operations is at their residence, you should allow the costs of travelling between the residence and the sites at which the trader works — an itinerant trader being one who travels from their home to a number of different locations for the purely temporary purpose at each such place of their completing a job of work (BIM37620). HMRC also records a qualitative limit on how far such a taxpayer may live from where they normally carry on the trade, and a caution against applying the base of operations test outside the narrow confines of its utility (BIM37620).

…and 13 more on the full entry.

Can I claim parking if I use the flat-rate mileage deduction?

Yes — parking sits outside the mileage rate on both routes. For a sole trader using simplified expenses, HMRC states the mileage rate does not include incidental expenses incurred in connection with a particular journey, such as tolls, congestion charges and parking fees, and that these will be allowable as a deduction where they are incurred solely for business purposes (BIM75005). For an employee getting mileage allowance relief, HMRC lists parking among the things that are not mileage allowance payments — it has nothing to do with mileage at all (EIM31215) — states that this kind of expense continues to be covered by the general expenses rules and not by the AMAPs scheme (EIM31335), and permits relief for the actual cost of expenses that would be incurred regardless of the mode of travel, which might include toll fees, congestion charges or car parking (EIM31820). So the mileage claim and the parking claim are separate.