"by making rail travel more affordable it can increase rail passengers and fare revenue"
But in terms of commuters (and excepting some of the particular changes post-Covid*), no, it can't. Commuter trains into London are (roughly speaking) full. And when you've filled trains at the asking price you can't carry more people. And you've either got the price about right or you perhaps need to raise them. The government capped fares, so in fact, the TOCs wanted to raise fares.
The spare capacity is off-peak and could be priced better but you can't do much about high commuter fares.
It's also worth noting that the greenest form of transport (according to the Department of Transport) is coach travel, not rail in terms of CO2/passenger km. Yes, a full train is the greenest form of transport but a lot of them aren't full. All that greed pig capitalism at National Express and Megabus means they fill coaches as much as they can using airline pricing. If a seat to London is empty, might as well charge £7 for it as £0. Pretty much free money.
It would be cheaper and greener to shut down most of the rural rail and have coaches competing for business.
* Post-Covid there has been a decline in Monday and Friday travel as that's a day people tend to WFH but the prices are still the same as every other day.
Very true, but it's worth noting that on the Continent (France, at least) the cost of travel to the place of work is an allowable deduction against income tax. In the UK, it isn't if you're on PAYE, but it is for the self-employed, which is a bit odd.
The treatment of employed versus self employed work travel is not inconsistent, at any rate as HMRC sees things.
The underlying principle is that travel costs incurred in the performance of your work duties, whatever your employment status, *are* tax deductible. However the travel costs incurred in getting to the position to commence your work duties are *not* tax deductible. As an employed person, when travelling to the office I am going about my own business so the cost is no different from going about my leisure. When I reach the office I commence my duties so any further travel costs incurred during the day to perform the duties assigned to me by my employer are tax deductible notwithstanding that they are travel costs incurred to perform work. Either the employer pays them directly, or the employee pays them and claims reimbursement, in each case without any tax consequences. Decades ago as a trainee accountant I spent weeks at a time at the offices of clients while auditing their books; although I travelled from home directly to the client the incremental costs versus my cost of travel to the office could have been claimed as a tax deduction against salary had my employer not paid it. And in paying it the employer did not confer a taxable benefit in kind.
The principle is the “normal place of work”. Travel to that is never tax allowable; it’s the employee’s private expense. Travel beyond that is deductible.
In the case of the self employed person there is not normally a place of work to which the person travels to start work duties. The owner of the white van loads up his van with tools at home and does his admin and accounting at home. Every journey once he gets into the van to attend to multiple clients dotted all over the place is analogous to my visits to audit clients. It is rightly tax deductible. But if the self employed person ran his business entirely from a separate location away from home the deductible business travel would only be to and from that location. The cost of driving the van from home to the separate location would not be tax deductible. At least in theory.
I think that Quentin was talking about the Clever Dicks who work a nine to five at a fixed location for a single client, but fiddle the tax system by registering as a self-employed contractor; but I thought that this loophole had been welded shut?
"by making rail travel more affordable it can increase rail passengers and fare revenue"
But in terms of commuters (and excepting some of the particular changes post-Covid*), no, it can't. Commuter trains into London are (roughly speaking) full. And when you've filled trains at the asking price you can't carry more people. And you've either got the price about right or you perhaps need to raise them. The government capped fares, so in fact, the TOCs wanted to raise fares.
The spare capacity is off-peak and could be priced better but you can't do much about high commuter fares.
It's also worth noting that the greenest form of transport (according to the Department of Transport) is coach travel, not rail in terms of CO2/passenger km. Yes, a full train is the greenest form of transport but a lot of them aren't full. All that greed pig capitalism at National Express and Megabus means they fill coaches as much as they can using airline pricing. If a seat to London is empty, might as well charge £7 for it as £0. Pretty much free money.
It would be cheaper and greener to shut down most of the rural rail and have coaches competing for business.
* Post-Covid there has been a decline in Monday and Friday travel as that's a day people tend to WFH but the prices are still the same as every other day.
Very true, but it's worth noting that on the Continent (France, at least) the cost of travel to the place of work is an allowable deduction against income tax. In the UK, it isn't if you're on PAYE, but it is for the self-employed, which is a bit odd.
The treatment of employed versus self employed work travel is not inconsistent, at any rate as HMRC sees things.
The underlying principle is that travel costs incurred in the performance of your work duties, whatever your employment status, *are* tax deductible. However the travel costs incurred in getting to the position to commence your work duties are *not* tax deductible. As an employed person, when travelling to the office I am going about my own business so the cost is no different from going about my leisure. When I reach the office I commence my duties so any further travel costs incurred during the day to perform the duties assigned to me by my employer are tax deductible notwithstanding that they are travel costs incurred to perform work. Either the employer pays them directly, or the employee pays them and claims reimbursement, in each case without any tax consequences. Decades ago as a trainee accountant I spent weeks at a time at the offices of clients while auditing their books; although I travelled from home directly to the client the incremental costs versus my cost of travel to the office could have been claimed as a tax deduction against salary had my employer not paid it. And in paying it the employer did not confer a taxable benefit in kind.
The principle is the “normal place of work”. Travel to that is never tax allowable; it’s the employee’s private expense. Travel beyond that is deductible.
In the case of the self employed person there is not normally a place of work to which the person travels to start work duties. The owner of the white van loads up his van with tools at home and does his admin and accounting at home. Every journey once he gets into the van to attend to multiple clients dotted all over the place is analogous to my visits to audit clients. It is rightly tax deductible. But if the self employed person ran his business entirely from a separate location away from home the deductible business travel would only be to and from that location. The cost of driving the van from home to the separate location would not be tax deductible. At least in theory.
That's one of the reasons my insurance broker shut up his shop and converted his garage at home into an office. No non-claimable travel costs.
I think that Quentin was talking about the Clever Dicks who work a nine to five at a fixed location for a single client, but fiddle the tax system by registering as a self-employed contractor; but I thought that this loophole had been welded shut?