For fifteen years, from the 2011/12 tax year until April 2026, the approved mileage rate didn’t move. HMRC’s rate for cars and vans sat at 45p for the first 10,000 business miles, and care providers built their reimbursement routines around it.
But earlier this year the rate rose to 55p a business mile (HMRC, travel mileage and fuel rates and allowances; ICAEW). six months on, it’s worth reviewing how that transition went.
The most efficient way to apply a new rate
The difficulty with applying a new rate is that it’s applied at separate points across the workforce. That could be a carer noting mileage between two visits, a coordinator approving a batch of claims, or a payroll run paying whatever number reaches it. You need to change the numbers in the spreadsheets as well as the mental figure your employees fall back on when making their own calculations.
Where a human still types the rate in, the old one tends to survive. A provider checking now may find claims still paid at 45p in one or two branches, some carers under-reimbursed and others over, and no clean record of which was which.
Embed the rate in the system rather than in people’s memory
The simplest way to make a new rate the source of truth is to embed it in the system that processes claims. One current rate, applied automatically to every claim as it’s submitted, with a record of the rate used and the date it changed. A rate change then becomes a single edit, and the audit trail shows which claims were paid at which rate.
One rate, one place, every claim
With Moss you set the rate once and it applies to every mileage claim automatically. Carers submit from their phones at the point of travel, and each claim carries the rate used and the date it took effect.
Moss makes sure that the reimbursement rate you’ve set is the only one that can actually get paid. In other words, it administers the number but doesn’t choose it without your input. HMRC sets the approved rate and the provider owns the policy.
What to check now
Most providers will have updated payroll by now. The places worth checking are the ones outside payroll, where a rate can sit unchanged for months:
- Claim templates and branch spreadsheets. If any still carry 45p, carers using them are being under-reimbursed on every claim.
- Claims paid since 6 April. Sample a batch from each branch and confirm the rate applied. Where 45p was paid, quantify the shortfall per carer and correct it in the next run.
- Your policy wording. If it says “the HMRC approved rate”, 55p is what staff are entitled to expect. If you’ve chosen to pay less than the approved rate, which is permitted, make sure the policy says so and that staff know they can claim tax relief on the difference.
The last rate change took fifteen years to arrive. The next one may not, and whether it lands as a single edit or another few months of cleanup depends on where the rate lives today.
