EIM31980 - Travel expenses: general: overseas conferences, seminars and study tours: spouses on business trips
Sections 336 to 339 ITEPA 2003
Some employers regard it as being in their interests to encourage a director or employee to be accompanied by his or her spouse on business trips, particularly those abroad. Employers who operate such a policy will usually pay or reimburse the spouse바카라 사이트™s expenses. Those expenses will be assessable on the employee as general earnings (except for 2015/16 and earlier employees in an excluded employment (see EIM20007)). The employee will then need to consider a deduction under Sections 336 to 339 ITEPA 2003.
Whether or not a deduction is due will depend on the facts. It is vital that these are established, preferably by a meeting with the couple, before a decision is reached.
To obtain a deduction the employee must show that the expense of taking his or her spouse was necessarily incurred in the performance of the employee바카라 사이트™s duties. It is legitimate to ask whether the duties would have required someone else to accompany the employee, for example a secretary or interpreter, if the employee바카라 사이트™s spouse had not accompanied the employee, or the employee had not been married. A deduction should normally only be permitted in the circumstances set out in EIM31985.
In the case of Maclean v Trembath (36TC653) the Courts refused a deduction for the cost of a wife바카라 사이트™s trip to Australia where there was no evidence to support a deduction.
Example EIM31992 shows how to determine which expenses should be disallowed when a spouse accompanies the employee on an overseas business trip.