Self employed - working from home. How do you work out proportion used for business?

asy1mpo

Hi

How do you all work out proportion used for business for e.g. broadband, electricity, mobile phone, council tax, mortgage interest, insurance??

Davide123

However you like, it's called self assessment

morgani

Several methods.

You can use by floor area.

However, I mainly use no. of rooms and % of time room available for business use.

lots of examples here - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/bimmanual/bim47825.htm

Dilly

Hi
I was told a few years ago by the Inland Revenue that you can calculate it by taking the number of rooms in the house excluding kitchen and bathroom and if you used one room for your employment ( as we did) you divide the number of rooms into your expenses like council tax, phone etc and pay that
EG if you have 3 bedrooms, and a living room , you can claim 1/4 of your allowable bills
Hope that helps

morgani

Dilly wrote: »

Hi
I was told a few years ago by the Inland Revenue that you can calculate it by taking the number of rooms in the house excluding kitchen and bathroom and if you used one room for your employment ( as we did) you divide the number of rooms into your expenses like council tax, phone etc and pay that
EG if you have 3 bedrooms, and a living room , you can claim 1/4 of your allowable bills
Hope that helps

A good basis but you may want to avoid stating that one room is used exclusively for business use as it may lead to issues to do with possible business rates and/or capital gains tax on a proportion of the property if/when sold. Basically just ensure there is some private use and that the claim is as above and then apportioned I.e 90% business use.