Claim Your Tax Back / Lesson 4 of 7
Working from home relief
Choosing to work from home is not the same as having to. Only one of them qualifies.
The short answer
- ✓ You must be required to work from home, not merely allowed or choosing to
- ✓ Only additional running costs qualify, never rent, mortgage or council tax
- ✓ A flat weekly amount is available without evidence
- ✓ Pandemic-era claims do not automatically remain valid
The test is stricter than people expect
Employees can claim tax relief for additional household costs only where they are required to work from home. Choosing to, or being allowed to under a hybrid policy, is not enough.
| Situation | Qualifies? |
|---|---|
| Your job has no office anywhere | Yes |
| Your employer requires home working in your contract | Yes |
| You live too far to travel and the employer requires it | Usually |
| You work from home two days a week by choice | No |
| Your employer offers hybrid and you prefer home | No |
| You occasionally catch up on work at home | No |
This is much narrower than the self-employed position, where a sole trader can claim a proportion of household costs without needing anyone to require anything.
What you can claim
Only the additional costs of working from home: extra heating, lighting and metered water, and business calls. Not rent, not mortgage interest, not council tax, and not broadband you would have had anyway.
HMRC offers a flat weekly amount that needs no evidence, which is what almost everyone uses. You can claim actual additional costs instead, but you must be able to evidence the increase, which in practice means separating out the marginal cost of being at home, and that is difficult enough that few people attempt it.
The bit HMRC does not spell out
Many people who claimed successfully during the pandemic assume the claim is still valid. The rules were temporarily relaxed then and have since returned to the stricter "required to" test. Continuing to claim under a hybrid arrangement you chose is claiming something you are not entitled to, and because relief often sits quietly in your tax code, it can persist for years unnoticed.
Worth checking your code if you claimed in that period and your working arrangements have since changed.
Common mistakes
- Claiming under a voluntary hybrid arrangement. Requirement is the test.
- Claiming rent, mortgage or council tax. Only additional running costs count.
- Assuming a pandemic-era claim still stands. The relaxed rules ended.
- Applying self-employed logic. The employee test is much narrower.
Try it on your own numbers
This is the same calculator as the full tool page, using 2026/27 rates.
Working from home (self-employed)
Which method gives the bigger deduction, HMRC's flat rate or your actual costs?
The flat rate needs at least 25 hours a month.
For the actual-costs method
Heating, electricity, council tax, rent or mortgage interest, water, broadband.
Best deduction
via the method, saving about in tax.
Simplified flat rate
Actual costs
Estimate only. The simplified flat rate covers utilities only, you can still claim a business share of broadband/phone separately. Limited companies use different rules.
Key takeaways
- ✓ You must be required to work from home, not merely allowed or choosing to
- ✓ Only additional running costs qualify, never rent, mortgage or council tax
- ✓ A flat weekly amount is available without evidence
- ✓ Pandemic-era claims do not automatically remain valid
Check you have got it
3 quick questions. No score is kept, and you can change your mind.
1. You work from home two days a week under a hybrid policy you opted into. Can you claim?
2. Which of these can an employee claim for working from home?
3. You claimed successfully in 2020 under the relaxed pandemic rules. Does that claim still stand?
Sources
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