UK Working From Home Tax Relief

Who can actually claim working-from-home relief

This relief is narrower than most people think. HMRC lets employees claim tax relief on the extra household costs of working from home, but only where your employer requires you to do so, for instance because the job has no office, or your employer has no premises near enough to commute to. Choosing to work from home, or doing so under a flexible arrangement, generally does not qualify since the rules tightened after the pandemic on 6 April 2022. If you are self-employed, a completely separate set of home-office rules applies, and this tool is not for you.

For employees who do qualify, the calculator works out the relief on the simplest basis HMRC offers: a flat £6 a week, with no receipts required, multiplied by the number of weeks you worked from home and then by your marginal tax rate. The key thing to grasp is that you do not get £6 a week back. You get the tax on £6 a week back, which at the basic rate is just over £1 a week. The relief reduces your taxable income, it does not refund the cost itself.

The flat rate versus your real bills

HMRC gives you two routes. The flat £6 a week is the path of least resistance: no evidence, no receipts, just claim it. The alternative is to claim your actual additional costs, the measurable extra heating, electricity, and metered water that your work hours add, plus any business phone calls. For most desk workers the actual figure lands close to or below the £6 flat rate once you strip out costs you would have incurred anyway, which is exactly why HMRC offers the flat rate as a sensible default. Claim actual costs only if you can document a materially higher figure, and keep the bills, because HMRC can ask to see them.

One point the flat rate cannot stretch to is broadband and rent. You cannot claim a share of your internet or rent simply because you work from home, since you would be paying those whether you worked or not. The relief is strictly for the additional cost your work causes, which is the principle behind both the flat rate and the actual-cost method.

Forty weeks at the basic rate

Take the default inputs: 40 weeks worked from home, taxed at a 20 percent marginal rate. The relief is modest but entirely free to claim.

The chart shows why your tax band matters so much. The same £240 allowance is worth £48 to a basic-rate taxpayer but £96 to a higher-rate one, because the saving is the allowance multiplied by your rate.

Backdating and the marginal-rate twist

If you were eligible in earlier years but never claimed, you can usually backdate the relief for up to four tax years, which can turn a small annual figure into a worthwhile lump sum claimed in one go. The marginal rate input is where this calculator quietly handles a UK nuance: Scottish taxpayers do not use the 20 and 40 percent rates. A Scottish basic-rate payer is on 21 percent and a higher-rate payer on 42 percent, so a Scottish higher-rate worker enters 42 and sees a slightly larger saving on the identical £6 flat rate. The flat rate itself is the same across the United Kingdom; only the rate the allowance unlocks differs.

Can I still claim for the lockdown years?

During 2020/21 and 2021/22 HMRC relaxed the rules so almost anyone told to work from home could claim the whole year even for a single day. Those concessions have ended, but you can still backdate a claim to cover them if you were eligible at the time and never submitted it, subject to the four-year window. Use the weeks input to reflect the period you actually qualified.

Does my employer's tax-free allowance affect this?

If your employer already pays you up to £6 a week tax-free to cover home-working costs, you cannot also claim the relief on the same money, because you have not borne the cost yourself. The relief exists for employees whose employer does not reimburse them. Check your payslip first, then claim only the shortfall.