claiming your rent as a portion of your self employed business expense

londonTiger

I am flatsharing, and my blog has just started making money, I've been working on it on my spare time away from work.

In the future I would like to make this my full time income, and move away from my companies payroll and work fewer days as an outside consultant.

My question is when I am just renting out a room, am I eligible to count half of my rent as a business expense, I'll be in my room working away pretty much 9-5.

Also what happens if I rent out a one bed apartment, and use my living room as my office, does that change my situation?

Cheers

antrobus

londonTiger wrote: »

I am flatsharing, and my blog has just started making money, I've been working on it on my spare time away from work.

Then you need to register as self-employed with HMRC.

londonTiger wrote: »

My question is when I am just renting out a room, am I eligible to count half of my rent as a business expense, I'll be in my room working away pretty much 9-5.

Aka 'business use of home' - it's fairly standard for the self-employed to claim back something -whether you could get away with half would be something else.

londonTiger wrote: »

Also what happens if I rent out a one bed apartment, and use my living room as my office, does that change my situation?

Well yes, because the rent received would be an additional source of taxable income.

dvdrdl

You can make money blogging?
Maybe im getting old... but how?

soolin

OP it might pay you to spend a little money and get an accountant to go through your first years accounts. Once you get a solid basis you could then just carry on doing them for future years yourself.

Sixer

As far as I am aware, unless there is a room in your home that is *solely* for business use, you cannot claim a proportion of fixed costs (this includes rent and mortgage) as allowable expenses. You can claim a proportion of running costs (eg light and heat).

http://www.paylesstax.co.uk/useofhome.html

That's an old article, but as far as I am aware, it's still current. As a self-employed person working from home, I claim a proportion of my electric, water, telephone and internet bills. That's all.

InsideInsurance

You can only claim for that which is explicitly for business use. As the post above, this is easier to prove if you've set up an explicit room for a home office. If your renting a single room and just putting your laptop on a coffee table to do some blogging it would be harder to claim part of your property is explicitly for the business.

It'll be easier to claim bills but if your only renting a room are you actually paying bills or does your rent include them?