Costs / expenses you can claim for as allowable expenses
These include:
- office costs, eg stationery or phone bills
- travel costs, eg fuel, parking, train or bus fares
- clothing expenses, eg uniforms
- staff costs, eg salaries or subcontractor costs
- things you buy to sell on, eg stock or raw materials
- financial costs, eg insurance or bank charges
- costs of your business premises, eg heating, lighting, business rates
- advertising or marketing, eg website costs
A general rule to consider in claiming for expenses that you are unsure about is to following this rule by HMRC , “is the expense wholly, exclusively and necessarily for business use only”
If you work from home
You may be able to claim a proportion of your costs for things like:
- heating
- electricity
- Council Tax
- mortgage interest or rent
- internet and telephone use
You’ll need to find a reasonable method of dividing your costs, eg by the number of rooms you use for business or the amount of time you spend working from home.
For Example
You use one room in your home as home office use. The rent and all associated bills comes to £500 (rent, rates, other associated bills) you must divide and compute reasonable and accordingly. (£500 / 2 rooms) / 31 days = £8.06 per day. So of that you spent 20 days of that at home, therefore 20 days x £8.06 = £161.20 is an allowable home office expense
Personal use or business use
Example
Your mobile phone bills for the year total £359. Of this, you spend £120 on personal calls and £239 on business.
You can claim for £239 of business expense
Source HMRC