Taxi Driver Online

one of the drivers is having a investigation by the Inland Revenue.
they say he should only have 25% dead milegae. the rest should be paid milegae.
He is a PH but even as a hack i only do 50/50.
So what do you think?

on a good day as a PH i can do more £££ than miles. but if its slow then 30-40% sounds about right.

perhaps i didnt explain well.
its the percentage of mile that we dont have any customers in.
i think for a hackey that should be better than for a ph.
but if someone does loads of airports then it cant be much more/less than 50%.

I think Steveo meant that if it's busy then he will spend less time driving to wherever he thinks is a good place to wait for work?

Anyway, as regards the hack, what is an appropriate amount of dead mileage will depend on his way of working. If he's attached to an office then he will have a lot less dead mileage (presumably), and perhaps this is the scenario that the tax man is alluding to.

If he just works the streets though, then I think the tendency is for drivers to return to the city centre area, in which case dead mileage would tend towards 50%. On the other hand, some may cruise a bit or sit at a suburban rank in the hope of getting a run back to town, but I don't know if Brighton has a lot of suburban ranks and if that would thus be feasible.

To take it to extremes, you could conceviably have zero dead mileage, if you just stop where you drop off and wait for a fare. Clearly this might take a while (or forever), but the driver might at least be able to go to a nearby rank which would mean little dead mileage.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

i see what you mean now. i was comparing the days take to the miles driven to earn it.

my meter stores the miles driven while hired as well as total miles for the shift, so i'll note them down over the next few days and see what the % dead / hired is.

One of the lads had a investigation a year or so ago and from memory he got away with paid 40% unpaid 60%.

It must also depend on how the firm he works with operate. If they are one of those firms that insist drivers go back to base, then up to 66% of his mileage could be unpaid.

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IDFIMH

That's what I was comparing as well steveo

I don't think I expressed what I said very clearly, but I think what cgull was thinking was that it shouldn't really matter how busy you are as regards dead mileage, since if it's quiet then idle time may rise, but dead mileage would stay the same - say if you were a hack always returning to the same rank.

What I thought you may have meant was that (and I'm kind of assuming you are a radio hack that always returns to the nearest suburban rank when they don't have a job - thus I'm assuming that as a PH you may return to a certain point when you don't have a job?) if it's busy then you wouldn't have to return to your usual point so often, so there would be less dead miles. For example, if a hack was returning to a suburban rank and just doing phone work, then he would have dead mileage to the job and back to the rank. But if it was busy then he woulnd't have to return to the rank (he would get another job when he cleared) and thus there would be less dead mileage.

That probably makes even less sense

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Being a large(ish) rural area our dead mileage is very high.

Maybe 60%.

Flyer

i've kept an eye on what the meter is recording as my " meter on" milage compared to my total miles for the shift and it does work out at about 50%.

I'm PH using data, and that figure did surprise me. however, i'm not the sort of driver who drops off and then sits, if i'm more than car 2 in a zone, i'm off somewhere else. so i guess that accounts for most of it along with some night work where i can be flung from one side of town to the other for picks ups.

same hear, settled with hector on 40% paid/60%dead

What will the revenue think of next

I would have thought it is quite reasonable to say you have no dead mileage as you charge for it, everything you charge for has an expense attached to it

Or am I being a plonker again

Kind regards Eric

Yes, and no.

If you run on a meter then you do have unpaid mileage, but I do understand what you mean.

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IDFIMH

I think the dead mileage concept arises because the general expectation is that when carrying a passenger a taxi will be operating it at the metered rate, thus to that extent the tax man can compare your takings, your mileage and the council rates to assist in verifying your tax return figures.

Of course, some mileage has to be disregarded in this comparison because the driver won't always have a passenger in the car - thus the idea of 'dead mileage'.

So basically the more dead mileage you have, the less the tax man will expect to see declared as earnings compared to the mileage you've covered.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

100% correct, even went to the council for copies of my old hackney test certificates to verify mileage

100% correct, even went to the council for copies of my old hackney test certificates to verify mileage