Uber Driver Allowable Expenses: The Complete UK Checklist

You only pay tax on your profit, not on what Uber pays into your bank account. Profit is your total fares and tips minus the costs of earning them. So every legitimate cost you fail to claim is money you hand to HMRC for no reason — and in our experience the average new client has been missing somewhere between £800 and £2,000 of claimable costs a year.

This is the full checklist. Nothing here is aggressive or clever; it is simply what the rules already allow.

First, a decision that changes everything

For your vehicle you have to pick one of two methods, and you generally stick with it for as long as you own that car.

Method 1: Simplified mileage — 55p a mile

You claim a flat rate for every business mile instead of totting up your running costs. From 6 April 2026 that rate rose to 55p per mile for the first 10,000 miles in the tax year, then 25p a mile after that. This single figure is meant to cover fuel, servicing, repairs, insurance, road tax and the wear on the car.

The appeal is obvious: no receipts to keep for anything vehicle-related, and one number to track. If you do 25,000 business miles in a year, that is £5,500 for the first 10,000 plus £3,750 for the remaining 15,000 — £9,250 off your taxable profit without a single fuel receipt.

Method 2: Actual running costs

You add up what the car genuinely costs you and claim the business proportion. That means keeping every receipt, but for a driver doing high mileage in an expensive or heavily depreciating vehicle it often produces a bigger deduction. You can claim the business share of:

• Fuel or electricity for charging
• Insurance, including the hire and reward policy you are required to hold
• Servicing, MOT, tyres, repairs and valeting
• Vehicle excise duty (road tax)
• Breakdown cover
• Capital allowances on the vehicle itself, or the finance element of a lease
• Interest on a loan used to buy the car

The catch is the word "business". If you use the car privately at weekends, you have to reduce every one of those figures by your private-use percentage — which is why an honest mileage log matters whichever method you choose.

Costs you can claim whichever method you use

These sit outside the vehicle decision, so they come off your profit either way.

Platform and licensing costs

• Uber's service fee — the commission deducted from every fare. This is a business cost, and it is one of the most commonly missed because drivers look at the money that arrives rather than the gross fare
• Booking fees and any other platform charges shown on your statements
• Your private hire driver licence and the vehicle licence
• DBS check and medical certificate fees
• Topographical or safeguarding test fees where your council requires them
• Local authority plate fees

Running the business

• Mobile phone — the business share of your bill, plus the handset if you bought it for work
• Data plan or in-car wifi used for the app
• Phone mount, dash cam, charger cables and in-car chargers
• Sat nav device or subscription
• Accountancy and bookkeeping fees (yes, our fee is deductible)
• Bank charges on a business account
• Bookkeeping or MTD software subscriptions
• Public liability insurance
• Union or trade body membership, such as a licensed drivers' association

Passenger comfort and vehicle presentation

• Car washes and valeting
• Bottled water, sweets and tissues provided for passengers
• Air fresheners and cleaning products
• Phone chargers offered to passengers
• Child seats where you carry them for bookings

Working from home

You do the admin somewhere. If you do your invoicing, record-keeping and correspondence at home you can claim a proportion of household costs. Most drivers use HMRC's simplified flat rate, which is based on the number of hours a month you work at home — straightforward, and it needs no evidence of your actual bills.

What you cannot claim

This is where drivers get into difficulty, usually after taking advice in a WhatsApp group.

• Your own food and drink while driving. Ordinary meals are not an allowable expense simply because you happen to be working. Genuine occasional subsistence on a journey outside your normal pattern is a narrow exception, not a daily sandwich
• Parking fines, speeding fines and penalty charge notices. Never allowable, no matter how unfair the ticket felt
• Everyday clothing. A smart shirt is not a uniform. Protective or branded clothing is different
• Travel from home to the area where you start working, if that is effectively your commute
• The full cost of the car in one go if you are using the mileage method — the 55p rate already includes the cost of the vehicle, so claiming both is double-counting
• Private-use portions of anything. If the phone is half personal, claim half

The trading allowance, and why it rarely helps

Everyone gets a £1,000 trading allowance. You may deduct it instead of your actual expenses, and if your total self-employed income for the year is under £1,000 you usually do not need to report it at all. For a working Uber driver whose real expenses run into thousands, claiming actual costs is almost always far better. It is worth knowing about, but not worth choosing.

What records to keep, and for how long

Keep your Uber weekly and annual statements, receipts for anything you claim, and a mileage record separating business from private miles. HMRC expects self-employed records to be kept for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline for that tax year.

Under Making Tax Digital those records now have to be digital, which in practice means photographing receipts into an app rather than filling a carrier bag in the boot. If your gross fares are over £50,000 this already applies to you.

If you would rather not think about any of this, that is exactly what we do. Send us your statements and we will find everything you are entitled to.