What Expenses Can I Claim as Self Employed?

When filling out your Self Assessment tax return, a self employed person can add up their business expenses and deduct these from their turnover—in effect reducing the amount of tax owed. But what business expenses are allowed? The HMRC has strict definitions of what counts as an "allowable expense".

We've reviewed the government guidelines around self employed expenses and summarised the information below. Use this to help you understand what expenses you can claim if you're self employed, and what's not allowed. If you are unsure whether or not a specific business cost is actually an allowable expense, contact the Self Assessment Helpline via phone (0300 200 3310) or webchat

• What can I claim if I'm self employed?
• FAQs
• Summary of allowable expenses for self employed taxes

What is an "Allowable Expense"?

By definition, allowable expenses are business costs that you can deduct from your profits before tax. By deducting business costs, you reduce your pre-tax profit and consequently the taxes you owe.

Example: Allowable Expenses

You earn £45,000 working as self employed this year and you claim £10,000 in allowable expenses. The remaining £35,000 is your taxable profit—this is the amount you pay taxes on, not the £45,000 in turnover.

Which Self-Employed Expenses Can I Claim?

Here are explanations of some of the expenses that usually count as "allowable expenses" for tax purposes if you're self employed.

General Office Expenses

General office expenses from monthly communications bills to postage, stationary and printer ink are all tax deductible if you're self employed.

You may be able to claim other software that is used on a longer-term basis as capital allowances IF you use traditional accounting (not cash basis).

Business Premises

If you're self employed you can claim your rent, repairs & maintenance of your business premises and equipment, utility bills, water bills, property insurance and security costs.

However, you cannot claim expenses for buying a property for your business or for alterations or improvements (although these might qualify for annual investment allowance or capital allowances).

What if you work from home?

If you work from home, you can claim some of your costs as allowable expenses, such as:

However, you can't claim the entirety of these costs. Instead, you'll need to figure out how much of these expenses went towards your business—based on both the proportion of your home used for business and the time spent working at home.

Example: Claiming Self Employed Expenses When Working From Home

If you have 5 equally-sized rooms in your home (e.g., kitchen, reception room and three bedrooms, one of which you've converted to an office) and you work from home 5 days a week then you could theoretically claim 14% of your utilities, council tax, mortgage interest or rent and internet or phone bills as allowable expenses. That is, 20% of your home is used for business (1 out of 5 rooms), but only on 5 out of 7 days—20% times 5 days divided by 7 days = 14%).

Please be aware that if you work from home, you need to alert your home insurance company—and depending on the work you do (e.g., do clients visit you at home?) your cost of home insurance might increase.

Travel & Car Expenses

When working as self employed, you can deduct some of your car expenses—a proportionate amount to the amount of driving you do for your business.

However, you cannot claim for non-business related travel costs/driving, fines or commuting from home and work and back again.

Using Simplified Expenses

If you use simplified expenses when you're self employed (which you can do if you work at least 25 hours a month from home), you can calculate your vehicle expenses using a flat rate by mileage—this saves you from having to track and calculated individual costs for insurance, repairs, fuel, etc. The flat rate for claiming vehicle expenses if you're self employed ranges from 24p to 45p per mile:

Example: Simplified Car Expenses

Let's say you've driven your car 12,000 miles for business in the year. You can claim 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles and 25p per mile for the next 2,000 miles, claiming £5,000 of car-related expenses:

Buying a car for your business can be treated as a capital allowance, as long as you're not using simplified expenses for cash basis accounting.

Clothing {#clothing

Regular clothes (e.g., business suits) are not allowable business expenses, even if you only use them for work. You can claim for:

Staff

While you can't claim your own wages/salary, National Insurance contributions, income tax, pension costs or life insurance, you can claim costs related to your staff and employees:

Goods

If you buy raw materials or stock (that is, goods for resale), you can claim these items, as well as the direct costs involved in producing goods. However you can't claim for depreciation of equipment used in producing goods or goods bought for private use.

Financial and Legal Costs

You can claim expenses related to hiring professionals to help with financial and legal matters related to your business, such as:

In addition, you can claim for financial business costs such as:

However, if you're using cash basis accounting the maximum amount you can claim in bank and interest charges is £500 a year.

Business Insurance

Self employed business insurances like public liability, professional indemnity and employers' liability are tax deductible; however personal insurances that are benefits such as personal accident insurance are not counted as allowable business expenses.

Marketing

Many expenses related to advertising your company and products are allowable expenses (however, you can't claim for event hospitality or entertaining clients, suppliers or customers):

Education

You can also claim for materials meant to keep you in the know regarding your profession, or to improve skills and knowledge used for your current business (but not a new business or new areas of your business), such as:

FAQs

Summary of What You Can Claim if Self Employed