Using home as office expense

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

something i heard on a podcast recently made my ears prick up.

They said that you can claim up to £26/month if you work enough hours froma home office. This obviously trumps £52/quarter. Googled it and this seems to confirm:

Simplified expenses if you're self-employed: Working from home - GOV.UK

am i looking at the wrong thing or is this a new change?

1. Those are the simplified rates for the self-employed, not employees or company director's (which most of us are)
2. If you're self-employed and work from home full time you'd probably be better off using the calculation based on the proportion of your home * time spent * household costs method anyway.

[MrC]

Here you go. Couple of seconds on Google got this.

Contractors’ Questions: How much to claim for my home-based office?

from your link:

Based on plain reading, it would appear that only the self-employed can claim home-as-office expenses and not directors of limited companies. However, we strongly believe that many directors of small companies do use their home-as-office extensively for business use and that, therefore, these individuals can be classified as self-employed.

This had me thinking that co employees/directors were being seen as self employed for the purposes of this claim but I fully accept that the overview spells it out very clearly. Shame.

[northernladuk]

from your link:


This had me thinking that co employees/directors were being seen as self employed for the purposes of this claim but I fully accept that the overview spells it out very clearly. Shame.

I'd rather take it from the Gov guidelines where it is in black and white over the belief of an accountancy firm I don't know.

It does mention extensively as well which generally we don't.

[gwynfryn]

Gorilla have a very good guide on allowable expenses as per HMRC - their guides shows Use of Home is an allowable expense of £18.00 per month - £216 per year. Either claim £18.00 at the end of each month (that's what I do) or a one off claim for £216.00 at the end of the tax year. Anything else is prone to HMRC getting interested I assume.
P.S. I am a director of a limited company (like most of us on here are).