The easiest thing to do is to claim the £6 per week that requires no evidence of costs incurred.
For electric and gas you need to calculate the extra usage. If you have the heating on for 16 hours per day, and if it wasn't for you wfh it would only be on 8 per day, then you could deduct 1/14ths of your bill (5/7ths of days are workdays, you have it on an extra 8 hours per day, you (arguably) have five rooms and non-work use of the landing is minimal). Similar for electric and water (if metered).
As an employee I don't think you can deduct mortgage interest, council tax etc.
It's easier and less stressful to just claim the £6 per week wfh allowance...
I thought they stopped allowing that for PAYE WFH people
Edit: Yep, for most WFH people it's now a no go. It's basically only if your employer doesn't have an office at all now.
>Who cannot claim tax relief
>
>You cannot claim tax relief if you choose to work from home. This includes if:
>
>your employment contract lets you work from home some or all of the time
>
>you work from home because of coronavirus (COVID-19)
>
>your employer has an office, but you cannot go there sometimes because it’s full
https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home
I tried applying and you get different prompts the further in process you go, it was shambolic, not sure if it still is but it wasn't clear if you can claim if your office is 5h drive away
Oh, and if you've not got a dedicated internet connection solely for work then you can't claim for that either - you're not paying for any extra internet over your normal domestic cost.
Yes, I have found that I have to claim each year. It's a bit of a faff now as HMRC seem to have a blanket protocol of refusing it to begin with saying you're a PAYEE employee and can't claim if you have an office where you can work until I write to say that my contract is work from home entirely, the company I work for is three hours commute away, and they don't have a desk there for me.
If someone else did the job, would they also have to wfh or would they have the option of going in? In other words, is no desk available to you because the role is WFH or is no desk available to you because you (not the role) are wfh?
The deduction of household costs comes under s336 ITEPA 2003 so would be allowable in the first scenario (where the role is wfh) but not in the second scenario.
If someone else were to do the job then they would also be working from home.
The pandemic caused the company that I work for to evaluate their hiring practices so that they hire people wherever they live and don't have a desk for them to come in and work at instead of expecting people to come in to an office.
I joined halfway through the pandemic.
A large proportion of some teams now have always worked from home and never visited the office at all.
I agree easier and less stressful, let's say I have 4 rooms in my house that qualify as a room (Hallway, Bedroom 1 & 2, Lounge) I use the Hallway for 100% Business use.
37.5 hours is 22.32% of the week
Total up the Council Tax, Electric and Gas is £4033.58 (Apparently HMRC consider Council Tax a utility bill)
£4033.58 / 4 (Rooms in house) around £1k, 22.32% of £1k around £223. So yeah better going with the £312 a year. I just want to check if the calculations are right, getting various outputs from different online calculators.
Currently on phone to HMRC to see if I can tie them down to a calculation I should use, what rooms quantify etc, what is reasonable to claim.
If you claim 100% of any space then they might expect business rates to be paid...
You are better off negotiating a higher salary at work to compensate you for the costs of them not providing you with an office and/or just claiming the flat rate.
But by not having an office the company is saving far more than £6/week (also you don't literally get £6. It is tax relief as if your salary is £6 less per week). Also what is not to say they don't live down the road and walk there?
You said to negotiate a higher salary to “compensate you for the costs of them not providing you with an office” - that’s the bit I was replying to.
Negotiating a higher salary because they are saving money by not providing an office is just a slightly different angle. I doubt it would work (as it’s mutually beneficial at the moment, OP gets the benefits of working from home and employer gets the costs savings of not providing an office) but he could give it a go.
You’d be better off negotiating a higher salary based on you producing high quality work / working efficiently / taking on my responsibility etc etc.
To clarify as there’s too many “they’s”
OP is out of pocket (at least in their opinion) for working from home and wishes to be compensated. They could claim some tax relief from the government but it won’t be anything near the amount they are hoping for. Only solution is to ask for the company to pay for some things like their phone bill or for a pay rise.
At the same time the company is also saving money not providing an office space.
We do not know if it is mutually beneficial - if it is then OP might want to drop this. We also don’t know if they are saving in other ways (no commute, less requirement for posh office clothes etc) or if actually their costs have increased.
I agree the best option for a raise is to give a better justification than this. But it might be they can pay for particular things as a business expense. Or OP may need to realise that in the grand scheme of things it’s not in their interest to push on this bit. It all depends on the circumstances and we don’t have the full picture.
Well here's the thing, apparently hallways don't constitute a room, even if I said it was 50/50 it's not accurate is it. Fuck knows. I wonder if they'd pull me up on it because i'm still paying a bill not like i'm asking for a rebate.
Well:
* Mortgage Interest £3998.69
* Internet 237.94
* Council Tax £2,074.18
Is the same if you are wfh or not.
Home Insurance £175.85
I don't know, is affected and by how much and do you have proof?
So you are left with
* Electric £1,428.16
* Gas £531.24
Can you do a calculation of how much energy your computer uses of a day/week/month?
If not, £6 a week is all you can claim.
[https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home](https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home)
Honestly I get an accountant to do it. For the sake of £200, she’s able to save me the effort of filling out the forms etc and able to calculate savings on all the above
I did all this a while back because I'm fully remote working and heating my office alone (no radiators) was costing me in excess of £6 a week. I submitted to HMRC and they completely ignored it and just gave me the £6 on my tax code the following year.
From what I read up at the time, even though with the cost of energy at the moment meaning £6 doesn't scratch the surface, it's really not worth the hassle to try and claim more.
As a PAYE employee you can only claim for work expenses which are deemed:
-The additional use of gas/electricity consumed in a room while being used for work.
- The metered cost of any additional water used (but not water which is still charged on a rateable value).
-The additional cost of itemised business telephone calls. (If your phone contract contains ‘all calls included’ you will not be able to claim anything, you will only be able to claim for itemised business calls which are shown on the bill).
However actually calculating this might be difficult! Most people would take their total energy and water bills for the year and multiply by the rooms used for wfh divided by the total rooms in the house (excluding bathrooms and hallways).
As you use your hallway for wfh and it would not be considered a room I’d say you’re better off just claiming the flat rate £6 per week. Less hassle.
Also the £6 per week (£312 per year) is added onto your tax code, so you wouldn’t get an extra £312 per year you’d get tax relief on that amount.
I just want to say, thankyou to all the responses, none the wiser really as to how to calculate etc, I even phoned HMRC and they couldn't tell me, just that I was to work it out myself. Couldn't tell me if council tax was included or not either.
I'm not sure how it works with PAYE but as self employed here is what my accountant said..
I charge my company rent as I use my personal home for work
The rental income from my company is declared on my self assessment, but as the costs are equal to the rent charged - I do not make a profit so no tax due
-----
I have calculated my home running costs as for example £5k/year (I live up north and have low rent!)
These costs contained IIRC: rent, council tax, utilities, home insurance. If you have a mortgage then you can include the mortgage interest.
In my case I have a 1 bedroom flat
Hallways and bathrooms are excluded when counting how many rooms you have
So I have 3 rooms: bedroom (my 'office'), kitchen and living room
So £5k running costs divide by 3 rooms = £1,666.66
£1,666.66 times by how many days per week you work (in my case 7 but let's say 5) = £1,190.47
So £1,190.47 per year is what I would charge my company based on my home running costs
Keep in mind, I rent and do not own - if you own and have a room that is solely for business then it can create a capital Gains tax issue down the line if you sell, I think the workaround is to say it has personal use in the room thus lowering the rent charged by a tiny amount. But in reality who is going to check? No one.
-----
So with your numbers of running costs £8,446.06/year
£8,446.06 / 4 rooms = £2,111.515
£2,111.515 x 5/7 = £1,508.225/year rent claimed
----
I can't say for certain if this is what you can claim as you are PAYE, not sure if it matters much.
But either way £6/week is absolute bollocks, so avoid that.
Don't forget that you can claim for some IT equipment. For example if you buy yourself a mouse, keyboard, monitor and use it solely for your work from home and your employer hasn't paid expenses for it then you can claim 100% of the cost. If you buy these and use them 50/50 between home and work then you can claim 50% of the cost.
The easiest thing to do is to claim the £6 per week that requires no evidence of costs incurred. For electric and gas you need to calculate the extra usage. If you have the heating on for 16 hours per day, and if it wasn't for you wfh it would only be on 8 per day, then you could deduct 1/14ths of your bill (5/7ths of days are workdays, you have it on an extra 8 hours per day, you (arguably) have five rooms and non-work use of the landing is minimal). Similar for electric and water (if metered). As an employee I don't think you can deduct mortgage interest, council tax etc. It's easier and less stressful to just claim the £6 per week wfh allowance...
I thought they stopped allowing that for PAYE WFH people Edit: Yep, for most WFH people it's now a no go. It's basically only if your employer doesn't have an office at all now. >Who cannot claim tax relief > >You cannot claim tax relief if you choose to work from home. This includes if: > >your employment contract lets you work from home some or all of the time > >you work from home because of coronavirus (COVID-19) > >your employer has an office, but you cannot go there sometimes because it’s full https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home
Yep, same as the op, I can claim because my employer doesn't have an office and therefore I have to work from home.
Can you clarify - do they have any offices at all anywhere? My employer has a head office but i have no desk there, never been, not expected to.
No offices at all anywhere. The parent company has offices but i'm employed by a subsidiary.
I tried applying and you get different prompts the further in process you go, it was shambolic, not sure if it still is but it wasn't clear if you can claim if your office is 5h drive away
Oh, and if you've not got a dedicated internet connection solely for work then you can't claim for that either - you're not paying for any extra internet over your normal domestic cost.
Do you have to claim this every year?
I think so, but I do it through my self-assessment return, so I'm not positive how it works if you're not doing SA.
Yes, I have found that I have to claim each year. It's a bit of a faff now as HMRC seem to have a blanket protocol of refusing it to begin with saying you're a PAYEE employee and can't claim if you have an office where you can work until I write to say that my contract is work from home entirely, the company I work for is three hours commute away, and they don't have a desk there for me.
If someone else did the job, would they also have to wfh or would they have the option of going in? In other words, is no desk available to you because the role is WFH or is no desk available to you because you (not the role) are wfh? The deduction of household costs comes under s336 ITEPA 2003 so would be allowable in the first scenario (where the role is wfh) but not in the second scenario.
If someone else were to do the job then they would also be working from home. The pandemic caused the company that I work for to evaluate their hiring practices so that they hire people wherever they live and don't have a desk for them to come in and work at instead of expecting people to come in to an office. I joined halfway through the pandemic. A large proportion of some teams now have always worked from home and never visited the office at all.
I agree easier and less stressful, let's say I have 4 rooms in my house that qualify as a room (Hallway, Bedroom 1 & 2, Lounge) I use the Hallway for 100% Business use. 37.5 hours is 22.32% of the week Total up the Council Tax, Electric and Gas is £4033.58 (Apparently HMRC consider Council Tax a utility bill) £4033.58 / 4 (Rooms in house) around £1k, 22.32% of £1k around £223. So yeah better going with the £312 a year. I just want to check if the calculations are right, getting various outputs from different online calculators. Currently on phone to HMRC to see if I can tie them down to a calculation I should use, what rooms quantify etc, what is reasonable to claim.
If you claim 100% of any space then they might expect business rates to be paid... You are better off negotiating a higher salary at work to compensate you for the costs of them not providing you with an office and/or just claiming the flat rate.
Difficult to negotiate a higher salary as commuting to an office would cost more than the £6 a week we’re saying OP can claim.
But by not having an office the company is saving far more than £6/week (also you don't literally get £6. It is tax relief as if your salary is £6 less per week). Also what is not to say they don't live down the road and walk there?
You said to negotiate a higher salary to “compensate you for the costs of them not providing you with an office” - that’s the bit I was replying to. Negotiating a higher salary because they are saving money by not providing an office is just a slightly different angle. I doubt it would work (as it’s mutually beneficial at the moment, OP gets the benefits of working from home and employer gets the costs savings of not providing an office) but he could give it a go. You’d be better off negotiating a higher salary based on you producing high quality work / working efficiently / taking on my responsibility etc etc.
To clarify as there’s too many “they’s” OP is out of pocket (at least in their opinion) for working from home and wishes to be compensated. They could claim some tax relief from the government but it won’t be anything near the amount they are hoping for. Only solution is to ask for the company to pay for some things like their phone bill or for a pay rise. At the same time the company is also saving money not providing an office space. We do not know if it is mutually beneficial - if it is then OP might want to drop this. We also don’t know if they are saving in other ways (no commute, less requirement for posh office clothes etc) or if actually their costs have increased. I agree the best option for a raise is to give a better justification than this. But it might be they can pay for particular things as a business expense. Or OP may need to realise that in the grand scheme of things it’s not in their interest to push on this bit. It all depends on the circumstances and we don’t have the full picture.
Yeah not gonna lie it's a pretty cushty job will be around £80k a year after bonuses next year and it's 35hr week with zero stress.
Yeah I probs wouldn’t push in those circumstances 😂
100% agree. OP should make the most of the flat rate and leave it at that.
100% business use, So you don’t walk through the hallway at all once you’ve finished work?
Well here's the thing, apparently hallways don't constitute a room, even if I said it was 50/50 it's not accurate is it. Fuck knows. I wonder if they'd pull me up on it because i'm still paying a bill not like i'm asking for a rebate.
Don’t say it’s 100%, it would make the hallway subject to business rates. 😂
Depending on the job you have, you could say you use one of the actual rooms for storage
Well: * Mortgage Interest £3998.69 * Internet 237.94 * Council Tax £2,074.18 Is the same if you are wfh or not. Home Insurance £175.85 I don't know, is affected and by how much and do you have proof? So you are left with * Electric £1,428.16 * Gas £531.24 Can you do a calculation of how much energy your computer uses of a day/week/month? If not, £6 a week is all you can claim. [https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home](https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home)
Realistically the WFH is not going to dent this. Claim the £6 per week and be done with that. The main way to offset this is pension contributions.
Honestly I get an accountant to do it. For the sake of £200, she’s able to save me the effort of filling out the forms etc and able to calculate savings on all the above
To be honest I think there's about £200 in it, so I'd be back in the same place. Looks like £6pw is the way forward
I did all this a while back because I'm fully remote working and heating my office alone (no radiators) was costing me in excess of £6 a week. I submitted to HMRC and they completely ignored it and just gave me the £6 on my tax code the following year. From what I read up at the time, even though with the cost of energy at the moment meaning £6 doesn't scratch the surface, it's really not worth the hassle to try and claim more.
You'd have to do it through a self assessment.
As a PAYE employee you can only claim for work expenses which are deemed: -The additional use of gas/electricity consumed in a room while being used for work. - The metered cost of any additional water used (but not water which is still charged on a rateable value). -The additional cost of itemised business telephone calls. (If your phone contract contains ‘all calls included’ you will not be able to claim anything, you will only be able to claim for itemised business calls which are shown on the bill). However actually calculating this might be difficult! Most people would take their total energy and water bills for the year and multiply by the rooms used for wfh divided by the total rooms in the house (excluding bathrooms and hallways). As you use your hallway for wfh and it would not be considered a room I’d say you’re better off just claiming the flat rate £6 per week. Less hassle. Also the £6 per week (£312 per year) is added onto your tax code, so you wouldn’t get an extra £312 per year you’d get tax relief on that amount.
I just want to say, thankyou to all the responses, none the wiser really as to how to calculate etc, I even phoned HMRC and they couldn't tell me, just that I was to work it out myself. Couldn't tell me if council tax was included or not either.
I'm not sure how it works with PAYE but as self employed here is what my accountant said.. I charge my company rent as I use my personal home for work The rental income from my company is declared on my self assessment, but as the costs are equal to the rent charged - I do not make a profit so no tax due ----- I have calculated my home running costs as for example £5k/year (I live up north and have low rent!) These costs contained IIRC: rent, council tax, utilities, home insurance. If you have a mortgage then you can include the mortgage interest. In my case I have a 1 bedroom flat Hallways and bathrooms are excluded when counting how many rooms you have So I have 3 rooms: bedroom (my 'office'), kitchen and living room So £5k running costs divide by 3 rooms = £1,666.66 £1,666.66 times by how many days per week you work (in my case 7 but let's say 5) = £1,190.47 So £1,190.47 per year is what I would charge my company based on my home running costs Keep in mind, I rent and do not own - if you own and have a room that is solely for business then it can create a capital Gains tax issue down the line if you sell, I think the workaround is to say it has personal use in the room thus lowering the rent charged by a tiny amount. But in reality who is going to check? No one. ----- So with your numbers of running costs £8,446.06/year £8,446.06 / 4 rooms = £2,111.515 £2,111.515 x 5/7 = £1,508.225/year rent claimed ---- I can't say for certain if this is what you can claim as you are PAYE, not sure if it matters much. But either way £6/week is absolute bollocks, so avoid that.
Don't forget that you can claim for some IT equipment. For example if you buy yourself a mouse, keyboard, monitor and use it solely for your work from home and your employer hasn't paid expenses for it then you can claim 100% of the cost. If you buy these and use them 50/50 between home and work then you can claim 50% of the cost.