Just Eat Mileage Tracker - HMRC Sees Your Earnings Now

The HMRC Digital Platform Rules - January 2026 Was the First Deadline

On 1 January 2024 the UK adopted the OECD's Model Reporting Rules for Digital Platforms. From that date Just Eat, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Stuart, Amazon Flex, and every other gig platform operating in the UK has been logging your full annual earnings - and reporting them directly to HMRC. The first batch of reports were due by 31 January 2026, covering the 2025 calendar year.

The practical effect: if you have been delivering for Just Eat without filing Self Assessment, or filing but understating, HMRC already has the data they need to flag a discrepancy. The compliance window for catching up is closing fast.

The good news for couriers who do file: every business mile you can prove is a deduction the platform did not subtract. Mileage is the largest single allowable expense for most couriers, and the only one Just Eat does not record for you.

The Moped Trap - 24p/Mile, Not 45p

A 2024 academic study tracking 40,941 deliveries across 195 couriers in central London found that 83 percent rode petrol mopeds, 10 percent drove cars, and 7 percent used bicycles. Outside London the car share rises sharply - distance, weather, and the suburban demand profile push more couriers into hatchbacks. Each vehicle has a different HMRC rate, and most couriers claim the wrong one.

MileClear lets you set your vehicle once and applies the correct rate for every business mile automatically. If you switch from a moped to a car mid-year (a common pattern in autumn) the app handles the rate change cleanly, and the export shows both methods broken out by vehicle.

How Just Eat Couriers Actually Work

The Just Eat Courier app structures the day around a few specific concepts. A Run is a scheduled delivery block, typically 3 to 5 hours, claimed from the Drop Time release on Thursday at around 14:00 for the following week. Within a Run, the app dispatches Offers (individual orders, with a one-minute window to accept) and Multi-Collect Offers (stacked orders combined into a single trip). Surge bonuses appear as Fee Boost on the offer card and on your Tuesday payslip.

MileClear's shift mode maps cleanly to a Run. Start a shift when you go online inside your Zone. Every Offer accepted within that shift, every Multi-Collect leg, every Hotspot reposition between drops, and the empty drive back to a busier area at the end of the run is recorded as a single grouped session. End the shift when you log off. The total mileage, broken down by leg, is yours.

Tag the shift as Just Eat. If you also pick up Stuart-branded Just Eat orders - McDonald's, KFC and Greggs deliveries are commonly fulfilled by Stuart rather than direct Just Eat - those go on your Stuart contract, get reported to HMRC separately, and benefit from the same automatic mileage capture.

Dead Miles Between Drops Are Still Business Miles

The biggest unclaimed mileage on a Just Eat shift is the empty leg. You finish a drop in a quiet residential area, accept a new Offer at a restaurant 1.4 miles back toward the high street. Just Eat does not pay you for the 1.4 miles; HMRC does not care. The mile counts because you drove it on shift, with the intent of taking the next paid delivery.

Multi-Collect makes this worse from a pay perspective and better from a tax perspective. A multi-pickup Multi-Collect runs around 32 minutes versus 16 for a single order, with effective hourly rates at £15.54 multi-pickup, £15.70 single, and £14.55 two-from-one-restaurant. The dead miles between the two restaurants feel like wasted time - until you remember each one is worth 24p (moped) or 45p (car) of taxable income off your return.

MileClear logs every mile by GPS without you having to tap anything between drops. The breakdown then shows what proportion of your shift was on-order versus repositioning. For most couriers it is roughly 40 percent dead miles - and 40 percent of a year's mileage deduction is several hundred pounds of tax not given back.

Typical Numbers for a UK Just Eat Courier

Per-Offer pay sits at £3 to £5 with Fee Boost on top during peak. Glassdoor estimates around £15 per hour gross before vehicle costs; full-time couriers in busy cities report £15 to £20. A 5-day-a-week courier doing two 4-hour Runs each shift might cover 15,000 to 25,000 business miles a year on a moped, or 12,000 to 18,000 on a car (cars do fewer drops per hour because of parking).

Both figures assume you actually have a contemporaneous mileage log. Without one, HMRC can challenge any estimate - and given they now hold your Just Eat earnings data, a Self Assessment with no supporting mileage record stands out. MileClear produces the log automatically.

GPS Evidence for Deactivation Appeals

The 2023 reports that Just Eat couriers were being deactivated by AI for suspected overpayments as small as £1.35 - based on the platform's interpretation of GPS data showing the courier had "strayed" from the restaurant - hit driver communities hard. Appeals were largely ignored.

A separate, independent GPS log can be the difference between an appeal that gets read and one that does not. MileClear records the precise route of every shift, with timestamps, speed, and stop points. If a deactivation hinges on whether you were actually at the restaurant when the platform claims you were not, an independent record of where you were is real evidence.

That is not the primary use of the app - the primary use is HMRC mileage. But the trace exists either way.

Multi-Apping Just Eat with Uber Eats and Deliveroo

In May 2023 Just Eat amended its contractor agreement to explicitly permit couriers to work for direct competitors at the same time. Most active UK food-delivery couriers run two or three apps simultaneously - the classic stack is Just Eat plus Uber Eats plus Deliveroo, sometimes with Stuart added for the big-brand fast food orders.

For HMRC, all of it is one self-employment trade. Earnings from each platform are reported to HMRC separately under the Digital Platform Reporting rules, but they all go on the same SA103S/SA103F page of your Self Assessment, with one combined mileage figure. You do not need three trackers - you need one tracker that tags the platform of each shift and totals correctly.

MileClear's platform tag handles this. Compare earnings per mile and per hour by platform from your own data. See the dedicated guides: Uber and Deliveroo.

The Leigh Day Claim and What Worker Status Would Mean

In April 2023 the law firm Leigh Day launched a group claim representing tens of thousands of Just Eat couriers, arguing they should be classified as workers rather than independent contractors. The case is ongoing. Uber drivers won worker status at the Supreme Court in 2021; Bolt drivers won worker status in November 2024; the Just Eat case is the obvious next domino.

If the claim succeeds, eligible couriers would be entitled to backdated holiday pay, NMW shortfall, and other employment rights. Worker status would not change the fact that you are still self-employed for tax purposes - couriers in this position remain on Self Assessment and continue to claim mileage. Whatever the outcome, the records you keep now are evidence either way. MileClear stores them automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

More Guides for UK Food-Delivery Couriers

Track Every Just Eat Mile from Today

Download MileClear free. Automatic GPS tracking, the right HMRC rate for your vehicle, and a Self Assessment-ready PDF that lines up exactly with the figures Just Eat is reporting to HMRC.