From what I've read this seems to be very grey ground.
I have a self-employed driving instructor who needs to wear glasses.
He cannot drive without them, therefore not being able to do his job.
As I see it though it's not 'wholly and exclusively' for business use, as there is private use outside of his working hours.
Can anyone clarify this for me?
He cannot do his job, nevermind do it safely, without the use of glasses.
Thanks
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Not Wholly and exclusively
Eye tests and corrective glasses are only allowable where the business pays the expense to meet obligations to employees under VDU rules.
Capital allowances
I'd agree that neither expenditure on the eye test, nor on the glasses is expenditure incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade.
Best you can do is treat it as capital expenditure on plant used partly for the purposes of the trade and claim the business proportion of an AIA. There's no wholly and exclusively test for capital allowances purposes.
Clearly there is duality of purpose - so it fails the wholly and exclusively test hands down.
you might want to consider McKnight v Sheppard
Tax case 71TC419. In that case, the judgement was that the purpose of the expenditure was what was relevant, not the inadvertent personal benefit. It expands on the Mallilieu v Drummond case but works against HMRC's view (and hence HMRC Inspectors are hardly aware of it and don't like it).
@ Brightster
But to determine the purpose of the expenditure, you need to look into the taxpayer's mind when they incur the expenditure (Bentleys Stockes and Lowless v Beeson 33 TC 491).
Having looked into the driving instructor's mind at the time of incurring the expenditure, we might deduce that his purpose in incurring the expenditure was wholly for the purpose of enabling him to drive and be a driving instructor.
However, does he only drive and be a driving instructor wholly for business purposes? Or does he also drive in a personal capacity? Needing corrective appliances for any private driving would be fatal (Prince v Mapp 46 TC 169).
But Steve.....
Prince v Mapp was in 1969, McKnight v Sheppard was in 1999 and therefore, in my humble opinion, supersedes any fatality implied from the judgement of the former.