working from Home 30 May 2022 at 10:38AM in Employment, jobseeking & training 6 replies 571 views

jevs2

My son lives with me and works at a Welsh University  . He has been set up with various Computers to work from my home and has done so for many months during the COVID period. Am I able to claim tax relief or any relief from the university for the very substantial  Electricity used and paid for by myself.

biscan25

He can claim £6/week relief for the tax years 2020/21 and 2021/22.
You'll have to claim the electricity cost back from him I'm afraid!

Marcon

jevs2 said:

My son lives with me and works at a Welsh University  . He has been set up with various Computers to work from my home and has done so for many months during the COVID period. Am I able to claim tax relief or any relief from the university for the very substantial  Electricity used and paid for by myself.

No - any claim would need to be made from your son. Whether he can claim from the university is between him and his employer.

Sandtree

jevs2 said:

My son lives with me and works at a Welsh University  . He has been set up with various Computers to work from my home and has done so for many months during the COVID period. Am I able to claim tax relief or any relief from the university for the very substantial  Electricity used and paid for by myself.

I'd question how he's managing to get very substantial power consumption from a work computer? Average person has 1 laptop at around 50w meaning a long 10 hour day uses 0.5 kWh or about 15p even in todays rates. Adding a monitor bumps it to under 25p per day.

£5/month isn't nothing but struggle to see how its "very substantial" and presumably just falls under your general relationship with your son and what contributions he makes to living at home. 

Undervalued

As above plus....

If your son has been running an electric heater all working hours in a room that would otherwise be unheated then that would give a "very substantial" rise in your electric bill. Obviously computers use some power but very modest by comparison. The £6 a week mentioned is reasonable excluding heating an otherwise unheated room.

Equally, but often forgotten, how much did he save in commuting costs?

74jax

How substantial?
My husband has worked from home since March 2020 and works for a worldwide games company, so runs several monitors and 2 computers all day every day. Heating costs have gone down as the study now heats all of upstairs and we have next to no increase in electricity.
For it to be 'substantial' have you checked you don't have a fault somewhere? 

TELLIT01

Your son should be contributing to the additional costs from the savings made by not commuting every day.