Personal driving (personal use)

Personal driving is any driving done for purposes not related to employment.

An employee may use one of your owned or leased vehicles for purposes other than business or, an employee may use their personal vehicle to carry out employment duties and get an allowance for the business use of that vehicle. Whatever the situation, if your employee drives your vehicle for personal reasons or you reimburse your employee for the personal driving of their own vehicle, there is a taxable benefit that has to be calculated and included in their income.

Personal driving includes:

• vacation trips
• driving to conduct personal activities
• travel between home and a regular place of employment, other than a point of call
• travel between home and a regular place of employment even if you insist the employee drives the vehicle home, such as when they are on call

Regular place of employment

A regular place of employment is any location where your employee regularly reports for work or performs the duties of employment. In this case, "regular" means there is some degree of frequency or repetition in the employee's reporting to that particular work location in a given pay period, month, or year. This "place" does not have to be an establishment of the employer.

A regular place of employment may include:

• the office where your employee reports daily
• several store locations that a manager visits monthly
• a client's premises when an employee reports there daily for a six month project
• a client's premises if the employee has to attend biweekly meetings there

Depending on the circumstances, your employee may have more than one location where they regularly report for work. If your employee has multiple regular work locations and travels between home and several work locations during the day, only the trip from your employee's home to the first work location or, the trip from the last work location to home is personal driving. Any travel by the employee between work locations is business related.

Exceptions

Where you provide your employees with transportation to a regular place of employment, it may not be a taxable benefit if either of the following applies:

• You need to provide your employees with transportation from pickup points to an employment location when public and private vehicles are neither allowed nor practical at the location because of security or other reasons
• You need to provide transportation to your employee who works at a special work site or a remote location. If so, see Board, lodging, and transportation – Special work sites and remote work locations

Point of call

A point of call is a place the employee goes to perform their employment duties other than the employee’s regular place of employment.

The CRA will consider the employee's travel between their home to a point of call to be "business" driving (and not a taxable benefit) if you need or allow the employee to travel directly from home to a point of call (such as a salesperson visiting customers, going to a client's premises for a meeting, or making a repair call) or to return home from that point.