Employment expenses working from home

[Winterinwonder]

Apologies for posting on this thread. I simply need some urgent assistance as I cannot find the answers on HMRC website.

I’ve made a claim for tax relief on employment expenses as I work from home. The total amount is £4,498.00. How much will I get back as a rebate?

When you submit it just asks where you want the rebate to go to and that’s it. There’s no guidance notes at all that I can see on my login.

Any help would be really appreciated.

My recollection from studying tax both at uni and for my professional qualification is that clothing can only be claimed if it's something that couldn't be worn other than as part of the work environment, e.g. a judge's wig; a vicar or priest can't claim for clerical shirts, despite the weird collar (I checked it out for a friend), because they need to wear a shirt.
Unless you can prove that you have a separate business broadband and phone connection (i.e. two broadband connections and phonelines into the house with no domestic connection to the business one), there is no way that HMRC will sustain your claim..

My Partner gets a tax rebate for sports wear as he is pe teacher. It's deemed as uniform.

Sort of don't want to add to the pile on but also as a self employed person my entire studio/office premises, business electric and business rates only comes to a bit more than that in a year - obviously there are more expenses involved in running a business too but by far the biggest cost for me is the separate business premises. And they do not get paid for by HMRC, just offset against my income to work out the final figure to pay tax on. I still can't claim for internet or utilities at home because they are not exclusively for work, which is fair enough.

I'm struggling to imagine what in an employed job would incur that much outlay without being reimbursed by the employer.

And fairly sure when I had a PAYE job that I wasn't even able to claim a WFH allowance for it, only for my self employed business before I had a studio, but I know rules have changed a bit since the dark ages when I first started, now broadband is a normal thing to have at home 😂

Watching with fascination!

Only here to find out why someone who is wfh would need specific clothes that they can claim for.

Why on earth would you get tax relief on stuff you need to WFH if you are employed?

I am self employed and don't claim anything like that for my expenses.

Sorry OP, your claim will be rejected (or investigated) as an employee.

Clothes can only be claimed in very specific circumstances, typically if you are employed your employer pays for costs like special clothing and the only tax relief you can get is for laundry. If you are self employed it's different but as an employee it's highly unusual to be able to claim more than £4 a week. If you have a separate phone line and broadband there is provision for that but you need to prove it's never shared for home use

I wonder if OP has friends who are MPs and she's picking up their bad habits.

HMRC don't pay my business expenses - I've been working from home three years and claimed virtually nothing. I think you're a bit misguided here.

Just hanging around for OP's next grabby nuggets

£4,498 ?
Nope!

Probably built an office from scratch 🤣🤣

It's possible to have two broadband connections one for business, one for everything else. Employer may require a separate work broadband for security reasons.

Most obvious clothing need is for PPE if she was going out on site and employer wasn't supplying this. But difficult if it could be used for other things - there was a well publicised case about 40 years ago. Helena Kennedy, I think, trying to claim for the black suit/dresses required to be worn under lawyers clothing, on the grounds that with her colouring she would never wear black, so these were clothes she was required to wear for work but had no possible use for out of work. She didn't win.

@Winterinwonder Is your first name Hannah?

Do you have a double-barrelled surname?

HMRC link - as a PP has said, you get tax relief on the amount you claim, so if you're a higher rate tax payer your tax relief will be at 40%. You may find that this is then adjusted via your tax code, rather than paid as a refund.

It does specifically say in that link that you can't claim for things that have both private and business use, such as rent or broadband. The only way you can claim for telephone and internet costs is if you have an entirely separate, dedicated business line that is used wholly and exclusively for business purposes.

You can claim for additional gas and electricity for your work area, so you'd need to figure out an appropriate means of calculating that. That said, given the cost of electric and gas over the last couple of years, it's definitely worth doing the calculation, rather than just opting for the flat £6 a week.

I agree with PP about the clothing costs. It does seem highly unusual that your work would require specialist clothing when you're working from home. You can only claim for "cleaning, repairing or replacing a uniform or specialist clothing".

HMRC has more information here on what can and can't be claimed.

Is your broadband seperare from your home broadband?