The Commissioner of Inland Revenue is required to regularly set kilometre rates so that these can be used by self-employed business owners or close-companies to determine available tax deductions for business use of a vehicle (if they chose to use that method). In practice, the same rates are often also used by businesses who reimburse employees who use their personal vehicles for work purposes. Provided reimbursements are made at or below the specified rates, they can be paid “tax free”.

Use of these rates is not compulsory. Business owners can instead claim deductions for actual costs incurred, and likewise employers can reimburse employees at higher rates, but records would need to be kept substantiating that the rate of reimbursement is a reasonable approximation of actual costs.

Given the large increases in fuel prices in 2022, some employees may try to push employers to provide a higher reimbursement. By way of contrast, the tier 1 rate for petrol & diesel vehicles was $0.79 in 2021 and $0.82 in 2020 (when the average cost of regular petrol was only $1.92).

Inland Revenue has stated that the increase in the 2022 rates (from 2021) is due to an overall increase in vehicle running costs, largely due to fuel costs.

The Tier 1 rates recognise the fixed and variable costs of running a vehicle and can be used for the first 3,500km of business travel, or the business portion of the first 14,000km of total travel in the vehicle. After these limits, the Tier Two rates apply (these only reflect the variable costs).

We have written several articles in the past on the practical problems with the two-tier kilometre rate method in particular for reimbursing employees and suffice to say these still exist where employees are reimbursed for high levels of work-related travel. If you’d like to refresh your memory on this method, we wrote about the practical issues with the introduction of the two-tier system in August 2018 and updated it with new developments in September 2019.

Self-employed and close companies

If you are a sole trader or qualifying close company and use the kilometre rate method to claim business vehicle costs, this new rate applies for the 2022 year, being the year 1 April 2021 - 31 March 2022 if you have a standard balance date. The increase in the rate will increase the amount of vehicle costs you can claim when you file your 2022 tax return. If you have already filed your 2022 income tax return, and relied on the 2021 kilometre rates, depending on the amount of the difference between the two amounts you may be able to self-correct the difference in your 2023 income return or, if the difference is material, file a Notice of Proposed Adjustment (which is only available within four months after the filing of an income tax return).

Employers

If you are an employer and are reimbursing employees for work-related travel, the increased rates apply to reimbursements made from the date that they were issued – 27 May 2022. If your reimbursement policy states that you will reimburse employees at the Inland Revenue rate, you will need to update the rate you pay as soon as practically possible. When rates are increased, a lag in updating rates paid to employees, while potentially disadvantageous to employees, does not cause a PAYE problem.

If your reimbursement policy states a set rate at which you will reimburse work related mileage, and this is lower than the new rate, you do not need to do anything as the amount you pay will be tax free, but you may get pressure from employees to increase the reimbursement rate.

As noted above, it is not compulsory to use the Inland Revenue rates, any reasonable amount can be reimbursed but documentation will need to exist to support any payments in excess of the Inland Revenue rates if you treat these as not taxable.

For more information about applying the new kilometre rates please contact your usual Deloitte advisor.