Don’t forget to claim home working tax relief

Many may not be aware that they can claim tax relief for additional household costs if they are required to work from home regularly, either for all or part of the week.

This tax relief is not available to those who choose to work from home, only those that must do so.

This tax relief has been designed to cover additional costs, such as heating, metered water bills, home contents insurance, business calls or a new broadband connection.

A worker may also be able to claim tax relief on equipment used in their role, such as a laptop or mobile phone. Details of this can be found here.

However, the tax relief available does not cover costs that would stay the same whether a person was working at home or in an office, such as mortgage interest, rent or council tax.

Workers can either claim tax relief at a rate of:

- £6 a week from 6 April 2020 (for previous tax years the rate was £4 a week) – no evidence is required to make this claim.

- the exact amount of extra costs incurred above this weekly amount – this will need to be evidenced with receipts, bills or contracts.

Taxpayers get tax relief based on the rate at which they pay tax. For basic rate taxpayers (taxed at 20 per cent), for example, claiming £6 a week would mean they receive £1.20 per week in tax relief.

Employees can claim this relief by clicking here. They will need to use or set up a Government Gateway ID using their National Insurance number and information from their P60 form.