Are You Eligible for Working from Home Tax Relief?

Planning Your Tax Properly

Working from home (WFH) tax relief was created to help people recover extra costs they might have accrued while working from home during the pandemic, but not everyone fits into the criteria.

To be eligible to claim you must first be certain that you:

• Have been told to work from home by your employer. You do not qualify if you chose to work from home.
• Have incurred higher home costs (such as heating, lighting etc) that are a result of working from home
• Haven’t been charging your extra costs back to your employer as expenses.
• Are an employee – you cannot claim if you are self-employed
• Do not pay tax by self-assessment. If you do, you can make the claim through your self-assessment tax return.

You can double check if you qualify with the government tool. https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/claim-tax-relief-expenses/only-claiming-working-from-home-tax-relief

How much will you receive?

• Basic rate = £1.20 or £62 per year
• Higher-rate – £2.49 or £125 per year.

Making a Claim

When making the claim, ensure you have the following to hand:

• Your Government Gateway ID. If you are not already registered for one, you will be able to do so during the process.
• The date you started working from home

Once you have completed the form, your PAYE code will automatically change, and your employer will be notified. Rebates for the current year will be reflected by a slightly smaller amount of tax being withheld from your earnings. If you are claiming for the last tax year, this will be paid as a lump sum.

The WFH Tax Relief was brought in following the introduction of Covid-19 restrictions which caused many people to work from home when they did not need to before. It has always been possible to claim income tax relief on certain employment expenses. You can find out more about how to do that here.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-income-tax-relief-for-your-employment-expenses-p87

If you’d like to know more about Self-Assessments and how we can help you, contact us.