What expenses can I clain without receipts?

crayola

I am an idiot: I managed to lose my receipts when moving house. There's nothing that can be done about this now, but I am still hoping I'll be able to claim something back on what is going to be a punishing tax return this year.

So what can I still claim for in my return? I'm thinking probably phone bills, electricity, anything that is documented in a way that does not involve physical receipts. Am I right in thinking it will be OK to claim for these things? Is there anything else I could think about claiming for that I haven't mentioned here? Getting a bit desperate now tbh.

Thanks all. I haven't done this before so it's all a bit scary. For the record I work full time from home, buy all my own office equipment and pay all my travel, but was sort of thrown into this following redundancy so not as prepared as I should be.

EDIT: in another post there is a reference to £3 a week being an amount that HMRC won't query: is this intended to cover all expenses or simply the fuel costs of running a home office?

System

£3 per week covers everything

crayola

Ah OK thanks. Not the answer I was hoping for but it's better than the only alternative I could think of which was claiming for nothing

chrismac1

This post is going to bring a pile of bricks down on my head, but here goes:

The official HMRC verdict is no paper receipt to claim. Wakey wakey Mr. Taxman, this is the 21st Century here and not the 19th. Many - even very large - businesses don't bother with proper tax receipts these days.

In my view my job as an accountant is to prepare a set of accounts from the information available. If that is paper receipts, fine. If paper receipts are missing but there is other evidence of the expenditure - bank statements, e-mail confirmations, diaries of journeys made to clients who've been invoiced, that is good enough for me. I have verified the expenditure and it is going into the books.

If this applies to just the odd expense item, job done. If it is wholesale, then I put a note on the face of the tax return explaining the extent of the missing evidence and what other evidence I have used to support the expenses. In my close out letter to the client which goes with the accounts I state the risk involved in the missing chits and verbally request him or her to improve next year. "If nothing else, buy a lever arch file, hole punch everything and stick it in there until you next see me" is the default.

So now consider the position if we should get an enquiry. When they ask why chits are missing, our first reply is "Did you not read the tax return we submitted?" which usefully gets HMRC on the back foot early doors. But in advance of the meeting we've been phoning round all possible suppliers - especially for large amounts - if necessary quoting the Data Protection Act - to get copy invoices, which if they are businesses of any size they are legally required to keep for 6 years.

Having documented at the time the extent of the problem, we know exactly where to look to get this list together of missing chits in order to kick off the phone trawl.