UK Working From Home Tax Relief Calculator

What This Relief Covers

If your job required you to work from home, HMRC lets you offset part of your household running costs against your income. There are two methods:

• Flat rate — £6/week (£312/year). No receipts needed. Simplest.
• Actual costs — the business portion of gas, electricity and business phone calls. Needs bills and a time-and-area apportionment (e.g. 10% of bills if you used one room of ten for 40 hours out of 168 hours a week).

Refund = eligible expense × your marginal tax rate. A basic-rate payer at the full flat rate gets about £62/year. Higher-rate payers get around £125/year. Scottish taxpayers use Scottish income tax bands.

Abolition From 6 April 2026

HMRC has confirmed the relief ends with the 2025/26 tax year. From 2026/27 no claim is possible. However, the standard 4-year time limit for overpayment claims still applies, so as of today these windows are open:

• 2022/23 — claim by 5 April 2027
• 2023/24 — claim by 5 April 2028
• 2024/25 — claim by 5 April 2029
• 2025/26 — claim by 5 April 2030

The 2021/22 window closed on 5 April 2026. If you didn't claim it in time, HMRC can no longer accept it.

Eligibility — the "Required" Test

Since 6 April 2022, HMRC only accepts claims where the employee had no choice about working from home. Qualifying situations:

• Your employer had no office at all
• Your duties could only be performed at home
• Your home was too far from the nearest office to commute to reasonably
• You have a formal homeworker contract with no alternative workplace

Hybrid working by contract or choice, occasional homeworking, and "the office was full that day" scenarios all fail the test. If HMRC asks for evidence, a written employer statement confirming your role required WFH is the cleanest proof.

Employer Reimbursement vs Tax Relief

Some employers pay a tax-free £6/week WFH allowance directly (permitted under ITEPA 2003 s316A, which is unaffected by the 2026 change — only the employee self-claim route is abolished). If your employer already does this, you cannot ALSO claim HMRC relief for the same period — you can only claim the difference if your employer paid less than £6/week. The calculator assumes you are claiming the full flat rate yourself.

What Actual Costs Do Not Cover

HMRC explicitly excludes these even under the actual-cost method:

• Rent or mortgage payments
• Council tax
• Broadband line rental (only additional business-call costs qualify)
• Any dual-use item you'd have bought anyway