What is the HMRC mileage rate for 2026/27?

gov.uk's approved mileage rates for cars and vans, from tax year 2026 to 2027, are 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles and 25p a mile above that. The previous rates, in place from 2011 until 2026, were 45p and 25p, so the first band has gone up and the second has not moved. These are the rates a self-employed person may use under the simplified expenses method instead of working out the actual running costs of the vehicle.

Is the band's fuel rate the same as HMRC's?

No, and it is worth keeping the two apart in your head. The per-mile figure on a band statement is the band's own arrangement for dividing the band's own money — it decides how much of the fee comes off the top and goes back to whoever drove, before the rest is split. HMRC's rate is about your own tax return and has nothing to do with what the band pays you. A band can set its rate at whatever it likes; that choice does not change the approved rate, and the approved rate does not oblige a band to change its own.

What records do I need for mileage?

For each journey: the date, what the trip was for, where you started and where you finished, and how far it was. For gig work that is the date, the band and the venue, your own postcode and the venue's, and the round-trip distance. A figure worked out from two postcodes is far easier to stand behind months later than a number you remembered, because anybody can check it by putting the same two postcodes in again. Keep it as you go — the gap between a record kept on the night and one reconstructed in January is the whole difficulty.

Can I claim mileage for a gig I was paid for?

What you claim, and how, is a conversation with whoever does your books — it depends on how you are engaged, what else you are claiming, and whether the band has already reimbursed you for the journey. What is entirely in your hands is the record: every gig, its date, the postcodes at each end and the miles. Turn up with that and the question is quick to answer. Turn up without it and the answer is guesswork, whoever is doing the answering.

What about the first part of the tax year?

The rates apply to the 2026 to 2027 tax year, which began on 6 April 2026, so gigs you drove to earlier in that year are not a separate case needing separate treatment. There is nothing to go back and recalculate at a different rate. What is worth going back for is the record itself: if you have gigs since April with no distance written down anywhere, the postcodes are usually still recoverable from the booking, and that is the thing to recover while it is still easy.

14 September 2026mileageexpensesmusicianstaxuk

HMRC's mileage rate is now 55p — what it means if you gig

The approved mileage rate rose to 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from the 2026 to 2027 tax year. What that means if you drive to gigs.

If you drive to gigs, one number that had not moved since 2011 has moved.

gov.uk's page on mileage and fuel rates and allowances now shows, for the tax year 2026 to 2027, approved mileage rates for cars and vans of 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles and 25p a mile above that. The previous rates, unchanged from 2011 right through to 2026, were 45p and 25p.

That is the whole of the news. The rest of this is what it does and does not mean for somebody who plays for a living, or for part of one.

What actually changed

The first band went up. The second did not.

Under the old rates you had 45p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year and 25p a mile for everything beyond. Now the first stretch is 55p and the tail is still 25p. The 10,000-mile threshold itself has not moved, and neither has the shape of the thing: one rate up to a point in the year, a lower one after it.

These are what gov.uk calls the approved mileage rates for cars and vans. A self-employed person may use them under the simplified expenses method — you record the business miles and apply the rate, rather than working out what the vehicle actually cost you to run and apportioning it.

Who it applies to

If you are self-employed and you drive to work — which, for most function and depping players, is precisely what a gig is — this is the rate you would be using if you use the mileage method at all.

If somebody else's company employs you and pays you for your mileage, the same published figures are the ones that arrangement is normally measured against, and that is a matter between you and them rather than something a blog post can settle.

And if you are not sure which of those describes you, that is exactly the sort of question worth asking once, properly, of whoever does your books — rather than deciding it yourself on a Sunday night with a shoebox of receipts.

The band's rate is not this rate

This is the part that gets muddled, and it causes real arguments, so it is worth being blunt about it.

Your band almost certainly has its own per-mile figure. It appears on your statement, it takes travel out of the fee before the remainder is split, and it is how the band makes sure the player who drove three counties is not quietly subsidising the player who lives round the corner from the venue. That figure is the band's own arrangement for dividing the band's own money. The band picked it. The band can change it.

HMRC's rate is about your tax return.

They are two different numbers doing two different jobs, and neither one governs the other. A band is not obliged to move its rate because the approved rate moved, and a band that sets its rate lower or higher has not done anything to your tax position by doing so. The glossary entry on travel and mileage says the same thing in a paragraph, and it is the paragraph to send to anybody in your band who has got the two tangled up.

What the record has to show

Whatever you eventually claim, and whoever decides it, the record is the part that is yours to get right. For each journey you want to count, you need:

The date.
What the trip was for — the band and the gig is enough.
Where you started and where you finished. Postcodes, both ends.
How far it was, and whether that is one way or the round trip. Be consistent; a mixture is worse than either.

The reason to write postcodes rather than distances alone is that a postcode-to-postcode figure can be checked by anybody, at any point in the future, by putting the same two postcodes in again and seeing the same answer. A remembered number cannot be checked by anyone, including you. If you are ever asked to stand behind a year of driving, the difference between those two positions is the whole conversation.

The arithmetic, with round numbers

Say you drove 8,000 business miles across the tax year. All of that sits inside the first band, so it is 8,000 at 55p:

8,000 × 55p = £4,400.

Under the old rate the same driving would have come to £3,600, which is the practical effect of the change for most working players: the miles are the same, the figure that comes out of them is bigger.

Now say you had a busier year and drove 13,000. The first 10,000 go at 55p and only the excess drops to 25p:

10,000 × 55p = £5,500
3,000 × 25p = £750
Total: £6,250

The whole 13,000 does not fall to the lower rate once you pass the threshold, which is the one thing people get wrong about a two-band rate. Only the miles above the line are at the lower figure.

The gigs you have already driven this year

The rates are for the tax year 2026 to 2027, which started on 6 April 2026. Gigs you played in April, May and June sit inside that year like any others. There is no split year to work around and nothing to go back and redo at a different rate.

What is worth going back for is the record. If there are gigs since April with no distance written down, the postcodes are almost always still there to be found — in the booking message, the day sheet, the calendar entry, the text from the bandleader with the venue in it. They will be harder to find in January and harder again the January after. The rate looks after itself. The record does not.

Keeping it without a spreadsheet

Most players keep this badly, and not because they are careless. It is because the information is scattered across several bands, a phone, a couple of group chats and somebody else's paperwork, and no one of those has the whole year in it. You are the only person who plays all of your own gigs.

That is the job Event Band Manager does from the player's side. Every gig you play carries its own postcode-to-postcode mileage, worked out from your home postcode to the venue and back, for every band you are in — and for every gig you covered as a dep, where the journey is yours and not that of the member you stood in for. It is recorded on the night rather than reconstructed later, it is the same figure your band used on the statement, and on My pay you can total the year up, with a tax-year view as well as a calendar one, and take the whole thing away as a file.

Two other pieces fit alongside it: how band members get paid explains why travel comes out of the fee before the split at all, and what a dep actually costs you covers whose postcode the mileage is measured from when somebody covers for you — which is the case people most often get backwards.

None of that decides what you claim. It just means that when you are asked, the answer already exists.

One more thing worth checking

While you have the numbers open: if you have never seen how your band's own travel rate changes what lands in your account, put a fee, a cut and your band's real postcodes into the free band pay split calculator and watch the travel come off the top before the split. No account, no sign-up. It is a different number from the one in this post, doing a different job — and now you know which is which.

See it in the app. Gigs, everyone's travel worked out from their own postcode, an equal split to the penny and a statement each at the end of the month — free for a band running itself.

What it does What it costs

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