HMRC Mileage for Musicians: 55p, 25p, and What Counts

If you drive to gigs in the UK, mileage is probably your single largest deductible expense — and the rate has just changed for the first time since 2011.

The rates

From 6 April 2026, the approved mileage rates are:

• Cars and vans: 55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, up from 45p.

• 25p per mile for every business mile above 10,000. This did not change.

• Motorcycles: 24p. Bicycles: 20p.

The increase was announced as taking effect from the start of the 2026/27 tax year. If you're preparing a return covering an earlier year, the older 45p rate applies to those miles — the rate follows the tax year the journey was in.

What the rate covers

The approved rate is meant to cover the whole cost of running the vehicle: fuel, oil, servicing, repairs, insurance, vehicle excise duty and MOT. That's why you don't keep fuel receipts when claiming this way — the flat rate replaces all of it.

You cannot claim mileage and separately claim fuel or servicing for the same vehicle. It's one method or the other.

Which journeys count

Business journeys. For a gigging musician that typically means:

• Home to a gig and back.

• Home to rehearsal, a recording session, or a co-write.

• Journeys to collect equipment, or to a repair shop for business gear.

• Travel to business meetings.

What doesn't count: ordinary commuting to a regular workplace, and personal journeys. Musicians are generally well placed here, because gigs are by nature at varying locations rather than a fixed place of work — but if you have a regular residency at the same venue every week, the position is less clear-cut and worth asking an accountant about.

Mileage or actual costs?

Two methods, and you generally stick with one per vehicle:

• Simplified expenses (mileage) — flat rate per mile, minimal record-keeping. Best for most musicians with an ordinary car.

• Actual costs — a business proportion of every real expense, plus capital allowances on the vehicle. Better if you run an expensive or heavily-used van, and considerably more work.

For a musician doing 6,000 gig miles a year in a normal car, mileage at 55p is £3,300 of deduction with a spreadsheet as the only paperwork. That's hard to beat.

What HMRC expects you to keep

A record per journey: date, destination, purpose, and miles. Round trips, not one way. This doesn't need to be elaborate, but it does need to exist — a claim for 6,000 miles with no supporting record is a claim you can't defend if asked.

Log it as you go. Reconstructing a year of gig journeys from memory produces an under-claim, because you'll forget the rehearsals.

Log the miles with the gig

Musavise's gig tracker records round-trip mileage against each show alongside the fee and expenses, and totals the miles for the year. Apply HMRC's approved rates to that total — 45p for the first 10,000 miles, 25p above — when you fill in the return (the tracker's built-in deduction figure currently uses US IRS rates). Export the year as a CSV for your return or your accountant.

All of it lives in one free Musavise account — free means free, within honest limits, and your data exports whenever you want it. Create your free account; it takes about two minutes.