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Tax & Mileage

HMRC Mileage Allowance for Locum Pharmacists (2026/27 Rate)

The current HMRC mileage rate, how the two-tier rate works after 10,000 miles, and how claiming it actually differs between PAYE/umbrella, limited company, and sole trader.

Last updated: 7 August 2026

Every locum shift at a different pharmacy is a trip to a temporary workplace — for PAYE, umbrella, and limited-company locums, that generally means the driving is a genuine claimable expense. For sole traders it's genuinely less clear-cut. Here's the current rate, how the two-tier structure works, and how claiming it actually differs depending on how you're set up.

The current rate (2026/27 tax year)

HMRC's Approved Mileage Allowance Payment (AMAP) rate for cars and vans is:

  • 55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year
  • 25p per mile for every business mile after that

This is set by HMRC and published on GOV.UK — it isn't something an individual pharmacy decides. It's also a flat rate covering fuel, wear and tear, insurance, and servicing, so you don't need separate receipts for fuel to use it.

The 10,000-mile threshold matters more than most locums realise.If you do enough locum mileage in a tax year to cross it, everything after that drops to 25p/mile — not 55p. A note that just says “55p/mile” without mentioning the threshold can overstate what you're actually entitled to once you're past it.

How to actually claim it — this depends heavily on how you're set up

The AMAP rate itself is the same for everyone, but whether you can actually claim mileage relief on home-to-pharmacy driving depends a lot on your work structure — see our guide on self-employed vs PAYE/umbrella if you haven't settled on one yet.

  • PAYE, agency, or umbrella.You're taxed as an employee, and employees travelling to a succession of temporary workplaces are well-established as entitled to relief. If the agency/umbrella pays you mileage below the AMAP rate, you can claim Mileage Allowance Relief (MAR) on the shortfall via Self Assessment or a P87 form.
  • Limited company.As a director/employee of your own company travelling to temporary client sites, this is also generally accepted as claimable — it's one of the specific reasons some accountants who specialise in locum pharmacists recommend trading through a company rather than as a sole trader.
  • Sole trader (self-employed, unincorporated).This is the one to be careful with. HMRC's test for the self-employed is whether home is your genuine “base of operations” — if it isn't, home-to-work travel counts as ordinary, non-deductible commuting under the “duality of purpose” principle (HMRC's Business Income Manual, BIM37605; case law: Horton v Young, 1971). A locum who simply drives to whichever pharmacy has booked them that day, with no fixed base and no stock or equipment kept at home, doesn't obviously meet that test — and several accountants who specialise in pharmacy locums report HMRC taking exactly that position with sole traders in practice.
If you're a sole trader, don't assume this deduction is available — get it checked.This is a genuinely disputed, fact-specific area of tax law, not a simple yes or no, and HMRC's manuals don't address locum pharmacists by name. It's worth a direct conversation with an accountant who works with locums before you rely on claiming mileage as a sole trader — the wrong assumption here is exactly the kind of thing that surfaces badly at an HMRC compliance check, and it's a large enough factor that it may change which way you decide to trade in the first place.

What you need to keep

  • The date of each trip
  • Where you drove from and to
  • The mileage for that trip
  • What you were paid for it, if anything, from the pharmacy

HMRC can ask for this at any point, and reconstructing months of shifts from memory at tax return time is exactly the kind of thing that goes wrong — under-claiming because you forgot a trip, or losing a receipt for one you were reimbursed for.

Log it as you go, not at tax return time

Locum1st calculates the driving distance for every shift automatically and keeps an HMRC-ready mileage log linked to the shift that earned it — nothing to reconstruct in January.

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