Working From Home Expenses (UK): What You Can Claim + How to Calculate It
What you can claim working from home (UK)
If you work from home, HMRC allows you to claim a portion of certain household costs — but only where they relate to business use.
Quick answer:
- Employees can claim a flat rate of £6 per week
- Business owners can claim a proportion of:
- electricity and gas
- internet usage
- phone costs
You cannot claim:
- home insurance (unless structured properly)
- rent or mortgage
- council tax
Step 1 – Count up all the rooms in your home
What counts as a room?
HMRC says that you can count “normal living spaces” as rooms, so you should exclude any hallways or bathrooms from your calculation. Only include rooms used for normal living.
Tip from Sean
Alternatively, you could base your calculation on floor space. Calculate the floor space of each room used for business purposes as a percentage of overall floor space and use that ratio to apply to your bills in step 3.
Step 2 – Calculate how much time you use each room for work
How do I calculate the percentage of use?
Calculate the percentage considering the total number of hours that you spend in a room. For example, if you use your living room for 10 hours in a day and spend an hour a day dedicated to doing work in the living room, your business usage of the living room would be 10%.
Tip from Sean
If you have a dedicated office, it’s a good idea to also use that room for something else – for example, an office that doubles as a workshop. That’s because if you dedicate an entire room to business use, you will need to pay Capital Gains Tax on that room if you sell your home!
Step 3 – Split your household bills across rooms*
Example:
£460 ÷ 5 rooms = £92 per room
Costs you can apply this calculation to
- Gas
- Electricity
Other costs:
HMRC says that unless you formalise a rental agreement of your home business space to your company you can’t claim tax relief for fixed costs, since you would pay them whether or not you worked at home. That means that you can’t claim tax relief for fixed costs like:
- Mortgage payment
- Home insurance
- Repairs and cleaning bills
- Rent
- Council Tax
For example, if the bills identified total £460, and there are 5 rooms in the house, you’d split the cost by the number of rooms (£460/5) giving you £92 per room.
*This method does not apply to broadband and telephone line rental costs. Instead, simply calculate the percentage of costs based on the volume of business use of the line. Please note, you should only claim costs of actual calls or use, and shouldn’t claim any part of the line rental costs (unless you didn’t already have a home phone or broadband line and needed to have one installed in order to be able to work from home).
Step 4 – Apply the percentage of work use to the relevant room costs
Example:
- Living room: £92 × 10% = £9.20
- Office: £92 × 80% = £73.60
Living room (Room cost x work use)
£92 x 10% = £9.20
Office/workshop (Room cost x work use)
£92 x 80% = £73.60
Step 5 – Enter the total business usage amount into your accounts
Total business usage
£9.20 + £73.60 = £82.80
Common mistakes when claiming working from home expenses
- Claiming 100% of a room used personally
- Including rent or mortgage incorrectly
- Not adjusting for time-based usage
