Everything You Can Claim if You’re Working from Home
While the world is slowly approaching a state of normalcy many people from all over the country will still continue working from home. And while this comes with a slew of different advantages and disadvantages, it also entails that you’ll be entitled to up to £250 tax relief for 2021-22. What’s great about this is the tax relief is paid at a flat rate and can be claimed even if you haven’t been working from home full time, which effectively makes handling your personal tax affairs easier.
However, there are downsides to the flat rate on the tax rebate. There will be cases wherein the rebate won’t cover enough of the other expenses that you may have made use of while working from home. Luckily, you can claim for more as long as you are prepared to provide evidence of your outgoing expenses. To make this easier for you, we’ve put together a list of the most common things you can claim if you’ve been working from home.
Tax Relief
Let’s start things off with the tax relief. You are qualified for the tax relief if your employers are requiring you to work from home. Do note that people who work from home by choice will not receive tax relief. You can claim tax relief up to £6 per week, which means you may receive £26 per month to help cover the additional expenses that come with working from home. The government also allows you to claim tax relief for the previous tax year, which means you can get up to £250 if you haven’t claimed your tax relief from last year.
In totality, they will allow you to four years up to four years of backdated claims. While this may not seem like much, it’s best that you take full advantage of this to help offset the expenses of the remote working arrangements.
Tax Relief for the Employed
The shift to remote working operations may have heaped additional costs on you. The tax relief alone may not be able to cover these costs. Luckily, there are alternatives. It’s entirely possible to make tax relief claims on other expenses as long as you can prove that they’re used for solely work purposes. This includes, but is not limited to, energy costs, phone bill expenses, and office equipment. We have to emphasize that you won’t be able to put up a claim for these expenses if they are utilized for both private and business use so be prepared to provide the necessary documentation to prove that the expenses are purely work-related.
Tax Relief for the Self-Employed
The entire process of claiming for tax relief gets a little more complicated for individuals that are self-employed. While self-employed workers can claim for more costs when working from home, you will need to account for a lot of different things. Aside from the lighting, eating, insurance, mortgage interest, utilities, and general maintenance, you’ll also need to consider the amount of time you’re using your home for work. This will affect how much tax relief you receive, as it will clearly define how much of your expenses are indeed work-related. If you want to get a general idea of how much you may be owed, here’s the HM Revenue and Customs’ simplified expenses system.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped shed some light on the different things that you can claim during the time you spent working from home. You’ll want to be as thorough as possible when providing documentation, as this will help increase your chances of having your claims approved. For more information on this entire process, be sure to contact a personal tax affairs professional.
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