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Tony,
If you spend money for business purposes it should be tax deductible. That is to say it will be part of your expenditure when you draw up your profit and loss account to work out your profits on which you are taxed.
For foreign travel there are some specific quirks which your accountant will help you with, but the basics are very simple - if you went there on business its deductible. If it was a holiday it wont be. If it was a bit of both things get more interesting but you would need to look at the main purpose of the trip. For example if you went for 2 weeks and spend 12 days selling like mad and 2 days on the beach, 2 days hotel/food etc would be knocked off as this was "private". If on the other hand you spent most of your time traveling around and slotting in a couple of meetings for business, only the additional costs of those meetings would be deductible. Ie extra taxi fares to get there. All your other costs would be private. How to prove all this? Well if its a business trip presumably you will have a stack of emails to prove all the meetings you have set up. Keep them. Keep the iterinery. Keep everything you can. If you are meeting suppliers make sure you keep all the brochures etc. Having "ticked and bashed" expense claim forms by the bucket load when I was training to be an accountant I can assure you its a piece of cake to detect a business trip vs taking the Mrs along and having a good time. You can spot them a mile off from simple things such as the timing of the flights and location of the hotel.
Hope that helps
+ to "consultant" there wont be any UK VAT in an overseas trip...!
Regards,
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