Expenses · Simplified expenses

Working from home: the flat rate deduction

The easiest deduction in UK tax: count your hours, pick a band, claim it. No receipts, no floor-area calculations, no arguments.

The bands

Hours worked from home / month	Monthly deduction	Over a full year
25 – 50 hours	£10	£120
51 – 100 hours	£18	£216
101+ hours	£26	£312

Under 25 hours a month? The flat rate isn't available — but the actual-costs method below still is. The hours are the time you work from home: quoting, invoicing, admin, planning jobs all count, not just billable work.

What the flat rate covers — and what it doesn't

The flat rate replaces a calculation for your household running costs: heating, electricity, and a share of rent or mortgage interest. It deliberately does not cover your phone and broadband — claim the business proportion of those separately, on top.

That last point is free money most home workers miss: the flat rate plus a fair share of the broadband bill plus the business share of your mobile is the complete claim.

Flat rate vs actual costs

The alternative is to claim the business proportion of your actual household costs, usually split by rooms and hours. For a spare-room office used heavily — say a full-time freelance developer in a rented flat — actual costs can comfortably beat £26 a month. For a few hours of evening admin, the flat rate wins on effort alone.

Rule of thumb

If you work from home full-time and your rent or mortgage interest is significant, run the actual-costs sums once — it's often 3–10× the flat rate. If home is where the paperwork happens and the real work happens on site, take the flat rate and move on with your life.

Getting it right

1
Be honest but not shy about the hours — quoting, ordering materials, bookkeeping and chasing invoices all count as working from home.
2
Your hours can change month to month: 30 hours in summer and 110 in a January rush means different bands for different months.
3
Claim phone and broadband separately — the flat rate doesn't include them.
4
If you sell your home, the flat rate has a hidden benefit: no part of your home was used 'exclusively' for business, so full private residence relief is preserved.

Set it once, claim it all year

Tell Get Sorted roughly how many hours a month you work from home and the deduction flows into your tax estimate and SA103 summary automatically.

Try Get Sorted free →

HMRC source

gov.uk — Simplified expenses: working from home

Always verify current thresholds and rates directly with HMRC or a qualified accountant.