People who are self-employed can claim so much more as tax-deductible business expenses than employees are allowed. Often people who used to work for a company and now run their own business don’t realise what they can claim tax relief on.
So what type of expenses can be claimed?
- General expenses e.g. advertising, cleaning, telephone, postage, stationery, business travel expenses.
- Legal expenses e.g. accountancy fees, and many legal fees.
- Staff costs e.g. wages, employers national insurance, subscriptions for staff.
- Financial expenses e.g. bank charges on business accounts, interest on loans, maybe car HP or lease.
- Equipment, including PC, laptop, iPad, printer and peripherals.
- Research items, sometimes including internet access, newspapers, magazines and more.
- Advertising, marketing and networking costs.
Allowable expenses are not just confined to those items used only in your business. You may be able to claim some of the expenses of running your home if you run the business from there. Also a car can be used privately, as well as in your business, as long as on some occasions your car is used wholly for your business. Running costs of a car, including insurance, road fund licence, car wash, AA subs can be claimed as expenses.
Example: if you pay £1.50 to park your car at work every working day during the year you will have paid around £390 just parking your car, if you claim this as an expense you could be saving £78 of tax.
What items cannot be claimed as a business expense?
- Drawings, your own drawings from the business such as living expenses, personal tax and NI contributions, and fines.
- Business entertaining, most gifts to customers (although these are allowable if under £50, the gift advertises your business and is not food, drink, tobacco or vouchers), charitable donations, donations to political parties.
- The initial cost of capital equipment such as machinery or a vehicle as there is a separate system for claiming tax allowances on these.
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Pl send tax claim data. Ta TD
One problem – you say PCs can be claimed as an expense, but according to the HMRC guide these have come come under Capital Allowances and not expenses.