HMRC Mileage Rate History: 45p to 55p, the Full Record

For fifteen years the answer to “when did the UK mileage rate last change?” was 2011. That ended on 6 April 2026, when the first-10,000-miles rate for cars and vans went from 45p to 55p. The 25p rate above 10,000 miles did not move, and has now stood since 2002. Where the IRS repriced seventeen times over the same span, the UK has repriced twice — which has consequences for anyone claiming, reimbursing, or negotiating around it, and for every backdated claim that now crosses the boundary.

The full AMAP history

Approved Mileage Allowance Payments (AMAP) rates by tax year:

Period	Cars & vans, first 10,000 miles	Cars & vans, over 10,000 miles	Motorcycles	Bicycles
2026–27 onwards	55p	25p	24p	20p
2011–12 to 2025–26	45p	25p	24p	20p
2002–03 to 2010–11	40p	25p	24p	20p
Before 2002–03	Fixed Profit Car Scheme — rates varied by engine size

Alongside the vehicle rates sits the passenger payment: 5p per mile per colleague carried on a business journey, payable by employers on top of AMAP — also unchanged since its introduction.

The table’s shape tells the story. AMAP replaced the engine-size-banded Fixed Profit Car Scheme in 2002 with deliberately simple flat rates; the 2011 Budget nudged the main rate up 5p; and everything since has been silence. Motorcycles and bicycles have not moved in over twenty years. The current-rates guide covers how the figures apply in 2026; this page is about what the long freeze means.

What the freeze cost, and what 55p restores

45p in 2011 and 45p in 2025 are very different amounts of money. Fifteen years of fuel, insurance, and vehicle-price inflation eroded the real value of the rate substantially — on general price inflation alone, matching 2011’s purchasing power would take well over 60p. The April 2026 rise to 55p closes part of that gap without closing all of it, and it leaves the over-10,000 rate exactly where it has been since 2002.

The practical consequences land differently depending on who you are:

• High-mileage drivers gain least, because the 25p over-10,000 rate did not move and has been frozen since 2002. A territory sales rep doing 20,000 business miles goes from £4,500 + £2,500 = £7,000 to £5,500 + £2,500 = £8,000 — a 14% rise on a fifteen-year freeze, and half their mileage is still valued at a 2002 rate.
• Employers may pay more than 55p, but the excess is taxable pay and reportable; the AMAP figure acts as the tax-free ceiling. Employers already paying above 45p out of their own pocket can now move more of that payment inside the tax-free band.
• Employees paid less than 55p — common in the NHS and elsewhere in the public sector, where local schemes sometimes trail AMAP — can claim Mileage Allowance Relief on the gap, and that gap just grew by 10p a mile for anyone whose employer has not moved.
• The self-employed using simplified expenses apply the same 55p/25p. The rise moves the crossover against claiming actual vehicle costs, and it is worth re-running that comparison — though the method you chose for a vehicle sticks for as long as you use it in the business.

Backdated claims: two rates, four years

The rate history matters most when claiming for the past. Employees can generally go back four tax years with a Mileage Allowance Relief claim — under-reimbursed business miles from several years ago are still claimable money.

The rates side of a backdated claim used to be trivial, because every open year carried the same 45p and 25p. From 2026–27 that is no longer true: a claim spanning 5 and 6 April 2026 has to be split at that date, with journeys before it valued at 45p and journeys after it at 55p. The evidence side is where backdated claims die. A claim for 2023–24 needs the journeys — dates, destinations, purposes, miles — and reconstructing them two years later from a diary and fuel receipts is exactly the reconstruction problem that contemporaneous records exist to prevent. HMRC’s five-years-after-deadline retention expectation for the self-employed points the same direction: the log outlives the tax year by design.

Worked example of what the gap is worth: an employee drives 6,000 business miles a year and is reimbursed 30p by their employer. For journeys in 2026–27 the AMAP value is 6,000 × 55p = £3,300 against £1,800 received, so relief is due on £1,500 — £300 for a basic-rate taxpayer. For an earlier year the same driver computes 6,000 × 45p = £2,700 against £1,800, and claims relief on £900. Four open years, two rates, one boundary at 6 April 2026.

A changing rate makes the dated log matter more

There is a tempting false conclusion in all this: if the rate never changes, surely an annual mileage total is enough. It is not. The 10,000-mile threshold resets each tax year, so miles must be attributable to years; employer reimbursements must be matched journey-by-journey for MAR; and HMRC’s evidence expectations concern journeys, not totals. The freeze simplifies the multiplication, never the record.

MileTrack keeps the record in claim-ready shape automatically: journeys detected in the background, marked business or private with a swipe, and exported as HMRC-ready PDF, CSV, or XLSX with per-journey dates, distances, and purposes. Free, no account needed, and journey history stays on your device by default — still there when a four-year-old claim window is about to close.

Related guides

• HMRC Mileage Rates 2026: 55p and 25p AMAP Rates Explained
• Mileage Allowance Relief: Claiming the Gap Your Employer Leaves
• HMRC Mileage Logbook Rules: Recordkeeping Checklist for 2026

Tax note: educational content only, not tax advice. Check current GOV.UK guidance before making or backdating a claim.