Each day I travel to a dedicated office owned by a company to work as a health and safety manager (director status) for a security company. This is my normal place of work, and I do not attempt to claim mileage to this location as it is my permanent place of work. During the night I hold a personal contract as an out of hours response officer for one of the security company’s contracts, whilst also attending vacant properties as requested to check for break-ins. These trips all start from my home, due to it being an out of hours response. Given that I hold a contract with the security company on a self-employed basis but am employed with director status as a health and safety manager can I be selfemployed? If the scenario I am in is acceptable can I claim my business mileage for visiting the sites at night time? They are short term contracts to various buildings all over the regions whilst they are being refitted/resold/rented out, so they don’t go outside the ‘24 months rule’ or ‘40% rule’. All the self-employed paperwork and equipment such as stab vests etc. are stored in my en-bloc garage.

Arthur Weller replies:
If you look at www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/employment-status-manual/esm4022 you can see that it is possible to be employed and also self-employed at the same time. If you also look at www.gov.uk/hmrc-internalmanuals/business-income-manual/bim37620 you can see that you can claim your business mileage for visiting the sites at night time, as an allowable expense of your selfemployed business.