We had a staff meeting today where somebody raised the subject of expenses for working at home. It seems and employer can pay (up to) £6/week to employees required to work at home. This is intended to re-imburse extra costs such as heating and phone calls.
Employer is prevaricating a bit about cost.
If employer doesn't pay the tax on £6 week be recovered.
Anybody got any experience of this?
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Only from a self employed angle. HMRC allow you to claim "A reasonable amount" for using one room as an office.
I used to claim £3 a week before I packed up full time in 2018. They were happy with that, though I suspect I could have claimed double that but I kept it low to avoid the risk of attracting their ire.
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Up until this year you had to be contractually bound to work from home and not just chose that option. There should be no accommodation (desk) for you in the office. I am in this position, my contract with my employer states that I work from home and that a desk will not be made available for me in the office - or words to that effect.
I don't know for sure if that has changed re CV19 but suspect that there is more leniency.
The £6 a week is for tax year 2020/21, last year it was £4.
My employer does not pay the allowance so I claim it back on my tax return. If you don't complete a tax return you can call HMRC or complete the relevant form online. You can even print it off and use good old fashioned post.
public-online.hmrc.gov.uk/lc/content/xfaforms/profiles/forms.html?contentRoot=repository:///Applications/PersonalTax_A/1.0/P87_20189&template=P87.xdp
If you can prove that working from home costs more than £6 per week then you can submit evidence to HMRC for consideration (I suspect energy bills for this year vs energy bills for last year or even a smart meter breakdown for the working day). You cannot claim for non metered charges if you use the service personally as well - e.g. broadband. Your employer should refund all metered / itemised calls made from home with a copy of the bill as evidence. My company specifically bans us from using personal technology - even home phones and provides company mobiles.
You get back the tax element, for example £312 x 0.2 = £62.40 refunded at 20% or at 40%, £124.80 - it's better than nowt.
Last edited by: zippy on Tue 22 Sep 20 at 20:25
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I should add to my post above that the process was totally painless and have never had any kickback from HMRC.
Refunds have been in my bank account within 2 weeks, often sooner.
Last edited by: zippy on Tue 22 Sep 20 at 21:58
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I was officially home based in an office job (with occasional travel) for a large company from about 2000 to 2008. ISTR then you took the numbers of eligible rooms in your house, excluding bathrooms but including kitchens and bedrooms, (so say 8), then worked out how much you used your "office" for work v. leisure (so I think I said about 50%) then claimed 50% * 1 room / 8 of your bills excluding mortgage against tax. My employer didn't pay anything though they would have kitted me out fully (desk, chair, filing cabinet etc)had I required.
By the time I finished work, when I was a ltd company, I was claiming a fixed weekly amount - I think £4.
I've never heard the bit about your employer having to say there would never be a desk available for you i the office.
The best thing was that any business mileage was paid from my front door, whereas the office wallahs had to deduct their how to office mileage if they went on a business trip
Last edited by: smokie on Tue 22 Sep 20 at 23:39
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>>business mileage was paid from my front door, whereas
>> the office wallahs had to deduct their how to office mileage if they went on
>> a business trip
>>
I recall there were various interpretations for this over the years from my various employers over the years.
The general rule was exactly as you state and how I understand it.
Some employers allowed mileage from home even if office based because it wouldn't be sensible to travel to the office if going elsewhere. The tax office said this wasn't allowed and some of the team complained that if they lived 200 miles from the office and were never really expected to go there then it wouldn't be fair on them, so a nominal 10 miles a day was deducted from claims.
Then from somewhere another rule arose where you could claim all mileage where you didn't pass the office on route but if you did you had to deduct the mileage to the office - lots of trips claimed going around the M25 the wrong way!
Then our HO moved 70 miles from our existing HO and our new manager insisted we be based there even though the old HO site was 10 miles from most of the team and was still being used and insisted we lose 140 miles from every trip. The entire team left within a year.
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Re office or home mileage, I recall it all boiled down to your "normal place of work". You couldn't claim mileage to your "normal place of work" Not as simple as it sounds when based at home and visiting the same multiple clients regularly, but for differing schedules/periods of time.
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I think I agree with Zero there, and I believe that was HMRC rules but employees sometimes interpreted differently.
The way I used to do it was if my office was 40 miles round trip away and I did 100 miles in any direction to see a client then I claimed 60 miles (against tax), unless I'd also been to the office when I claimed the whole 100 miles. (Of course this was pre-2000 while I was office based.)
Though now I've said it I can see a flaw in that!
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When I was nominally office-based but regularly travelling all over the country, mileage claims were always based on actual mileage less the home to (nominal) office mileage.
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My office is 180 miles away from where I live. I don't go there much, and even less so now of course. But, the crucial thing ( apparently ) is that I don't have a desk or other allocated workstation there, ( I just hot desk as the kids say ) so it's ok to claim travelling expenses for the journey. I am categorised and contracted as "field" based. Which sounds vaguely bovine I suppose.
I did once look into claiming expenses incurred for working from home ( I have a permanent office set up in what should be the dining room ) but was advised by an accountant that it might cause problems in the future when selling the house in terms of it being partially categorised as a business premises. So for a few quid a week, it didn't seem worth the ( possible ) hassle.
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>> Re office or home mileage, I recall it all boiled down to your "normal place
>> of work". You couldn't claim mileage to your "normal place of work" Not as simple
>> as it sounds when based at home and visiting the same multiple clients regularly, but
>> for differing schedules/periods of time.
ISTR there was at one time a saving in the home to office bit where, if you held a season ticket for your regular journey to work, then there was no deduction for home to office mileage. There was also some sort of triangle based calculation around where you started from/ended up and where the office was.
Latterly we were also strongly discouraged from using our own vehicles. I can count on one hand the number of occasions I drove for work, at least in my last CS post and two of those were to courses at Highgate House, a hop skip and jump form home. One though was to the British Library at Wetherby. It was seriously suggested that I travel 60 miles to London and pick up a pool car to drive to Wetherby. In doing so I would pass within sight of my home village by M1/J16.
I drove from home in my own Xantia.
We also had issues at the Quango with where people were based. The staff were London based Civil Servants based in a block on Kingsway. No argument there.
The Quango itself however comprised of fifteen Members appointed by Minsters to serve a fixed term. With the exception of the Chairman they had no desk etc in the office. They worked from home, latterly by email, except for travelling to visit operational sites for Tribunals etc and once a month to attend a formal meeting in London.
At some stage in the past the Revenue had, after extensive correspondence, classified them as office based. The result was that when we paid them to travel to the office, and they came from all over England and Wales by first class rail or air, their travel costs were treated as taxable benefits. The outcome was that the office met the tax liability and something on top because that payment too was a benefit. Their was some protocol with HMRC which allowed us to do that.
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>> By the time I finished work, when I was a ltd company, I was claiming
>> a fixed weekly amount - I think £4.
Thanks to those responding about WAH. It's the £6 flat payment that has been raised. The office are working on 'affordability'. They're saving a lot in mileage and car parking costs but OTOH are going to have to spend quite a bit making the office Covid secure.
The meeting yesterday was a video job. At some point our (female) CEO's kitten photo bombed her. Mercifully the Mrs Slocombe type joke went unmade.......
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I thought it was a legitimate expense to claim against tax rather than a payment from your employer.
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>> I thought it was a legitimate expense to claim against tax rather than a payment
>> from your employer.
Apparently it can be paid by the Employer at a fixed rate or, if the employer does not, as a reclaim for the tax on the amount of the allowance. Similar to motor mileage.
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While I understand the premise for the expenses claim, surely almost everyone is saving more than £6 a week by not commuting and so is already better off. Yet I expect in many (most) cases the employer doesn’t save much by people being at home unless there’s a permanent change in office space. Seems churlish to make an expense claim, but maybe that’s just me...?
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I think that if you were self employed, you wouldn't be commuting and making a claim for working from home. The allowance mirrors that.
I once lived 1/4 of a mile from my employer. My commute was by Shanks's pony, so in that situation, working from home would have left me out of pocket.
I don't mind paying taxes generally and know that for a fair and just society they are necessary though a few years ago I paid more than my salary in taxes and duties to the Govt. (no penalties) so I don't feel any guilt in being able to claim something back.
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Is the employee saving a fortune in commuting costs? I know many who are.
I had a colleague (50 years ago) who objected to the low mileage rate that they thought was offered. They couldn't accept they'd own car anyway, would pay insurance, VED, depreciation and servicing costs.
They ended up stuck in the office.
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>> Is the employee saving a fortune in commuting costs? I know many who are.
>>
>> I had a colleague (50 years ago) who objected to the low mileage rate that
>> they thought was offered. They couldn't accept they'd own car anyway, would pay insurance, VED,
>> depreciation and servicing costs.
>>
>> They ended up stuck in the office.
>>
Surely maintenance, depreciation and insurance would be higher with business use and extra mileage?
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>>Surely maintenance, depreciation and insurance would be higher with business use and extra mileage?
Yes, but not much more than the few hundreds of miles they'd be doing.
I found the rate very lucrative. I changed the insurance on a Ford 100E I'd bought for ten quid to fully comp to take advantage of the higher mileage rate. Helped towards my wedding costs.
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A friend of mine is working from home....I won’t name the company....she now makes one daily site visit a fortnight, whereas previously she made multiple site visits, racking up 30k + business miles pa. She got a mileage allowance, but liked a nice new lease car every 3 years and the high miles added to the costs. No company car was provided.
No more 6AM starts to drive mega miles to be on site at 8AM. She loves working from home. The extra heating and lighting costs far outweigh hours spent on the road before and after work.
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Expenses for Working at Home - Robin O'Reliant
