{"id":1319,"date":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/02\/22\/running-a-business-from-home-dont-forget-to-claim\/"},"modified":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T00:00:00","slug":"running-a-business-from-home-dont-forget-to-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/02\/22\/running-a-business-from-home-dont-forget-to-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"Running a business from home? Don\\&#8217;t forget to claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Running your own business can incur a number of costs, not least renting premises. But if you are a sole trader you may prefer to work from home.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s convenient, there&rsquo;s no commute and you&rsquo;re on hand if extra childcare is needed. Plus, there is the bonus of saving costs.<\/p>\n<p>But did you know there are a number of working-related expenses that you can claim for if you are using your home as your office.<\/p>\n<p>After all, you may not be paying rent on a town-centre location, but your general household bills will go up with the extra electricity, heating and home insurance.<\/p>\n<p>You can claim for some of these expenses though, including utility bills, internet, council tax and your mortgage interest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do I claim?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are two methods you can use for calculating your expenses &ndash; one is straightforward, but favours the taxman, while the other is more cost-effective for you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Using HMRC flat rate<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is the easier method and is unlikely to face any HMRC challenges. It is calculated on the number of hours a month you work at home. So, from a minimum 25 hours up to 50 hours you can claim &pound;10 a month. The figure rises to &pound;18 a month for 51 to 100 hours and anything over 100 can be claimed at &pound;26 a month.<\/p>\n<p>As an example, say you work 140 hours a month for eight months of the year (&pound;26 x 8) and 60 hours for four months (&pound;18 x 4), you could claim &pound;208   &pound;72 = &pound;280.<\/p>\n<p>The flat rate does not take into account telephone\/internet expense. You can claim for the portion of the bill that is related to business use.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Manual method<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The second calculation involves doing some sums. First, work out how much you pay in total for the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mortgage interest (not the full mortgage payment) or rent<\/li>\n<li>Electricity<\/li>\n<li>Water<\/li>\n<li>Internet\/telephone<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Insurance<\/li>\n<li>Council tax<\/li>\n<li>Repairs<\/li>\n<li>Heating<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, count the number of &lsquo;living space&rsquo; rooms in the house &ndash; this doesn&rsquo;t include the bathroom, kitchen, utility. The next step is to calculate the number of days you use your office and the number of hours each day.<\/p>\n<p>Let&rsquo;s say the answers are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Total household bills: &pound;6,000<\/li>\n<li>Number of rooms: 4 (three bedrooms and one lounge)<\/li>\n<li>Number of days a week you work: 5<\/li>\n<li>Number of hours a day: 8<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Divide the annual cost of &pound;6,000 by the number of rooms (6,000\/4=1,500)<\/p>\n<p>You use the office five days a week (1,500\/7*5=1,071)<\/p>\n<p>Divide 1,071 by 120 (the number of hours in five days) and multiply by 40 (the number of hours you work each week) = &pound;357.14<\/p>\n<p>The total is more than the &pound;280 you could claim with the flat rate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Need help?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you are unsure what you can claim, get in touch.<\/p>\n<!-- -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Running your own business can incur a number of costs, not least renting premises. But if you are a sole trader you may prefer to work from home. It&rsquo;s convenient, there&rsquo;s no commute and you&rsquo;re on hand if extra childcare is needed. Plus, there is the bonus of saving costs. But did you know there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","blog-left-layout","blog-style-postblock","","blog-alt-odd"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}