From: Ronald Raygun 
Subject: Re: Mystery shopping - Self employed, or self assessment?
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:05:13 GMT

Simon Finnigan wrote:

> I`ve done my calculations on expenses etc at 40p a mile,

Expenses are subject to a "wholly and exclusively" rule, which
means that expenses can only be claimed if they are entirely
incurred for the purpose of the work and for no other purpose.

Generally if you use a car both privately and for work, you can
apportion the mileage, because you can point to any particular
maile and say "this mile was driven only for work".  But if you
were to combine your mystery shopping trip with a private purpose,
such as doing your own personal shopping while you're there, then
it could get awkward, since then each mile driven to that shop
would have the dual purpose of work and personal.

> but I`m not sure
> what I can claim for printing an A4 page on a laser printer - the job
> involves a lot of printing (well over 500 sheets of A4 to date this
> month).

Printing costs an awful lot more than just the paper, since you need
to spread the cost of the toner, and indeed of the printer itself,
over the number of sheets you can expect that it will be good for.
All-in, I would think that 8p a sheet would be about right.