What can I claim as a business expense?

If you’re self-employed, your business will incur lots of different running costs. Some of these costs can be deducted from your profit as “allowable expenses”.

 

The standard HMRC allowable expense categories below have been taken from www.gov.uk/expenses-if-youre-self-employed/overview

  • Office costs, for example stationery or phone bills
  • Travel costs, for example fuel, parking costs, train or bus fares
  • Clothing expenses, for example uniforms
  • Staff costs, for example salaries or subcontractor costs
  • Things you buy to sell on, for example stock or raw materials
  • Financial Costs, for example insurance or bank charges
  • Costs of your business premises, for example heating, lighting, business rates
  • Advertising or marketing, for example website costs
  • Other allowable expenses. There is also a category to cover business running expenses not included in another category.  For example trade or professional journal subscriptions.

Other Allowable expenses to consider if you work from home

You may be able to claim a proportion of your costs for things like:

  • Heating and electicity
  • Internet and telephone provision
  • Council Tax
  • Mortgage interest or rent

You’ll need to find a reasonable method of dividing your costs. For example by the number of rooms you use for business.

For Example. You have 5 rooms in your home, one of which you use only as an office.

Your electricity bill for the year is £1,000.  Assuming all the rooms in your home use equal amounts of electricity, you can claim £200 as allowable expenses (£1000 divided by 5).

 

Overwhelmed by expenses piling up and need help clearing a backlog? We are here to help at Hitchinbookkeeper, just email or call us today.

Goodluck

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