Who Is Eligible for Working from Home Tax Relief?

What Working from Home Tax Benefits You Can Claim

There are three kinds of this tax benefit you can make use of, providing you qualify. These are if:

• You’re self-employed

• You’re employed

• You worked from home during the pandemic

Not everyone will qualify, which is why it’s important to understand the circumstances working from home tax help applies. This is covered in the following section.

Eligibility for Working from Home Tax

Currently, you can’t claim working from home tax relief if you have a hybrid working schedule or you choose to work from home some or all of the time. Likewise, if you’re working from home specifically because you’ve contracted Covid, you won’t be able to qualify. The option of working from home on a permanent basis doesn’t mean you will automatically get money for doing so.

Self-Employed

For the self-employed, working from home tax deductions can be calculated yourself if you don’t have a permanent office and spend the majority of your time at your residence. This is calculated through your self-assessment and will entitle you to money off the taxes that you pay. You can make use of the HMRC flat rate for these calculations or you can work them out yourself.

You are eligible for this kind of working from home tax aid if you work for yourself, you have set up a small business or work for yourself on a part time basis.

Employed

The strict criteria for the employed means that you can only claim working from home tax relief for a couple of reasons.

• Your profession means you have to live far from your place of work

• You do not have an office to go to

The government is also quite strict on the reasons that you can’t qualify if you’re employed. These include:

• Flexible work permitting you to work from home some or all of the time

• No space for you to work at the office because it’s full

• You contracted Covid but can continue to work from home

The HMRC working from home tax relief allows you to claim on items like phone calls for the business and power for the area you work. Fortunately, if you are employed but can only work from home, you can make a similar claim as outlined above in the self-employed section.

Pandemic

Covering the tax years 2020/2021 and 2021/2022, this permits anyone who worked from home for at least one day a year because of Covid to claim relief on a flat rate. The Coronavirus working from home tax relief was a way of mitigating some of the financial effects of the pandemic. For anyone who was employed and told to work from home, they qualify for this type of tax relief.

How to Claim Tax Relief

Claiming working from home tax relief can be done in a number of ways, but this depends on which type you are claiming for.

How to Claim if You’re Self Employed

This can be done in two different ways. You can either make use of the HMRC flat rate or work out your expenses yourself. The flat rate depends on how many hours you work from home in a month and starts at 25 hours.

• 25-50 hours a month entitles you to a flat rate of £10

• 51-100 hours a month entitles you to a flat rate of £18

• 101+ hours a month entitles you to a flat rate of £26

If this doesn’t sound like it would be enough to cover what you pay for home working, working out your actual costs will be more beneficial for you. There is no set way of doing this, but it is more time consuming and must be done in a fair way, otherwise you could completely fabricate your working from home tax allowances, then end up paying it all back at a later date as due tax.

Understanding Working from Home Tax Deductions goes into more detail about how this can be done.

All Other Claims

There are two options if you’re employed and looking to make a claim. You can either go through the government’s website or make use of a claims management company. Claiming through the website requires you to make a Government Gateway ID, which you can do with your National Insurance number, recent payslip, P60 or UK passport. This can sometimes be difficult for people who are unable to register or simply don’t have the time to do so.

The alternative is to use a claims management company. The benefit of using one of these companies to process your working from home tax claim is that they deal with HMRC on a regular basis, which can often expedite the whole process. Liaising with HMRC for you gives you more free time to focus on anything else you may need to get on with, be it your busy working life or other important matters.

Relaxed Criteria Over the Pandemic

If you were asked to work from home during the Coronavirus pandemic, you could qualify for tax relief up to £624. Even if you only worked from home for a single day in the two years the working from home tax rules were relaxed, you can claim the full amount. This is dependent on the amount of tax that you pay, but is usually distributed as a lump sum.

Can You Still Claim Working from Home Tax Relief in 2023?