HOMEWORKING COSTS - SELF EMPLOYED

If you’re self-employed and carry out some of your work from home you are entitled to include part of the running costs of your home in your accounts. There are two ways of calculating this.

Flat-rate method - If your sales are under the VAT threshold you’re eligible to use the simplified method. The amount that you can claim varies with the number of hours per month you work at home, as follows: 25-50 hours working from home per month £10 per month; 51-100 hours working from home per month £18 per month; 101 hours or more working from home per month £26 per month.

Costs Method - The other method is to claim for part of the actual running costs. Probably the best method is to work out how many rooms you have in your home, identify how many of those rooms you use for your work, then calculate how much time you use these rooms for business.

Some of the expenses you can include in your accounts.

• Mortgage - you can claim a proportion of the interest
• Rent - if you’re renting your home you can claim a proportion of the rent
• Council tax - HMRC allows you to claim a proportion of your council tax
• Telephone and broadband - apportioned on the basis of usage
• Light and heat - you can claim the business proportion of your gas and electricity costs for lighting and heating in the room(s) you use for business
• Property repairs - if a repair relates solely to the part that’s used for business, you would include this cost in full, subject to the business use of that room

Self-Employed pages ► Self Employed sole traders ■ Registration and National Insurance ■