If you are self-employed and work from home you are able to claim a proportion of your household costs as a business expense.
You can divide your household expenses into business and personal. Household expenses that you can claim for include things like:
Heating Electricity Council Tax Mortgage interest or rent Internet Telephone
You will need to calculate what proportion of the cost of items like these are for your business, for example:
You have 4 rooms in your home, one of which you use solely as an office every day, and your monthly electric bill is £400. Assuming all the rooms in your home use the same amount of electricity, you could divide your monthly bill by 4 (so £400 divided by 4), and you would be left with £100 as an allowable monthly expense.
If, however, you only work at home 1 day a week, you could further divide that £100 by 7, leaving you with £14.29 as an allowable electricity expense for that 1 day a week that you work from home.
Similarly, if you use a mobile for both business and personal calls you could determine what percentage of your calls are for business and apply that percentage to your monthly telephone bills.
Costs you can claim as allowable expenses
These include:
Office costs, for example stationery or phone bills Travel costs, for example fuel, parking, train or bus fares Clothing expenses, for example uniforms Staff costs, for example salaries or subcontractor costs Things you buy to sell on, for example stock or raw materials Financial costs, for example insurance or bank charges Costs of your business premises, for example heating, lighting, business rates Advertising or marketing, for example website costs
Costs you can claim as capital allowances
If you use traditional accounting, claim capital allowances when you buy something you keep to use in your business, for example:
Equipment Machinery Business vehicles, for example cars, vans, lorries
Comments