Claiming Working from Home Tax Relief
Claiming Working from Home Tax Relief
With millions of UK office support workers now required to work from home throughout the pandemic, many have been concerned about their household bills creeping up. This will especially be the case as we approach the colder winter months and now facing another lockdown.
On the 1st October HMRC launched a new online portal where employees can claim tax relief for work from home expenses for the 2020/21 tax year in just a few easy steps.
Employees have always had the ability to claim tax relief on the provision that their employer requires them to work from home. Before COVID-19 this was not a common benefit, but has since exploded as vast sections of the economy are being asked to work from home if possible.
Some employers pay a tax-free allowance for work from home expenses through employees’ salaries, however if this is not the case, employees are able to claim back directly from HMRC. For the 2019/20 tax year, a standard £4 per week was claimable without having to retain receipts and this has now increased to £6 per week for the 2020/21 tax year. If you need to claim more than this you are required to retain evidence, such as phone bills, and divide the portion of the bill used for work purposes.
In previous tax years, employees had to keep a record of the amount of weeks they were required to work from home before they could put in a claim to HMRC. For this current tax year, with COVID-19 making working arrangements unpredictable, they have simplified the process to enable employees to use an online portal to check eligibility and claim the tax relief and once approved, this will be applied to their adjusted tax code until March 2021. Even if you are only required to work from home one day a week, you are still able to claim the benefit.
The allowance will be calculated at the rate at which the employee is taxed which for standard tax code holders, this would equate to £1.20 per week tax relief (£6 multiplied by 20%) or £62.40 per annum. For higher tax code holders, they would receive £2.40 per week tax relief (£6 multiplied by 40%) or £124.80 per annum.
If you have a spare moment today, follow the link below to the online portal to check your eligibility or see HMRC’s press release for further reading:
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