Working from home tax relief

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government relaxed the rules to allow tax relief if you were working from home either partly or fully during the 2020/21 and 2021/22 tax years. 

As an employee, you could either claim tax relief for the actual additional costs incurred and supporting evidence would need to be available or, use the Revenue's fixed rate of £6 per week and no evidence was required.

Even if your employer only requested that you worked from home for at least one day in the tax year, you could claim the relief.

If the conditions apply and you have not yet made a claim, you can still do so via the HMRC website. For the 2020/21 tax year, you have until 5 April 2025 and for the 2021/22 tax year, you have until 5 April 2026. 

Changes from April 2022

As of 6th April 2022, HMRC have now changed the conditions and the availability of the relief is now more restrictive.

From the 2022/23 tax year, you can now only make a claim for tax relief if you have to work from home, not just because you choose to do so. Allowable examples include-

• your job requires you to live far away from your office
• your employer does not have an office

You cannot claim the relief if:

• your employment contract lets you work from home some or all of the time
• you work from home because of COVID-19
• your employer has an office, but you cannot go there sometimes because it’s full