Section 341 — Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003: Travel at start or finish of overseas employment

Travel at start or finish of overseas employment 341 1 A deduction from earnings from an employment is allowed for starting travel expenses and finishing travel expenses if conditions A to C are met.

2 Condition A is that the duties of the employment are performed wholly outside the United Kingdom.

3 Condition B is that the employee is UK resident .

4 Condition C is that in a case where the employer is a foreign employer, the employee is not a qualifying new resident for the purposes of Chapter 5C of Part 2 of this Act or Chapter 5 of Part 8 of ITTOIA 2005 (see section 845B of that Act).

5 If the travel is only partly attributable to the taking up or termination of the employment, this section applies only to the part of the expenses properly so attributable.

6 Subsection (7) applies if in the tax year the employment is in substance one whose duties fall to be performed outside the United Kingdom.

7 Duties of the employment performed in the United Kingdom, whose performance is merely incidental to the performance of duties outside the United Kingdom, are to be treated for the purposes of subsection (2) as performed outside the United Kingdom.

8 In this section— “ starting travel expenses ” means expenses incurred by the employee in travelling from a place in the United Kingdom to take up the employment, “ finishing travel expenses ” means expenses incurred by the employee in travelling to a place in the United Kingdom on the termination of the employment, and “ employee ” includes a person who is to be, or has ceased to be, an employee.

9 This section needs to be read with section 359 (disallowance of travel expenses: mileage allowances and reliefs).