Working from home tax relief: who qualified and how to backdate a claim

To claim for a past tax year, you must have been an employee and your employer must have required you to work from home, for example because it was in your contract or there was no suitable office for you. Choosing to work from home when an office was available does not qualify. For 2022/23 onwards you must send evidence that you had to work from home.

For each eligible year you can claim tax relief on £6 a week without receipts, or on the exact extra costs with evidence such as bills. The relief is at your tax rate, so on £6 a week a basic rate taxpayer gets £1.20 a week (£62.40 a year) and a higher rate taxpayer £2.40 a week (£124.80 a year). Claiming all four years at the basic rate on the flat rate is worth up to about £250 in total.

You cannot claim for things you use for both private and work purposes, such as rent or broadband.

If you do not need to fill in a Self Assessment return, you can claim online on GOV.UK.

Employers can still pay employees up to £6 a week (or £26 a month) tax-free to cover the extra household costs of working from home, and can reimburse more if you have evidence of higher costs. This is the main way employees can still get help with home working costs from April 2026, so it is worth asking HR whether your employer offers it. If you are building savings, any homeworking allowance is an easy amount to put aside; SYM can help you turn it into a daily saving habit.

The April 2026 change only affects employees. Self-employed people can still claim a proportion of household costs for the part of the home used for business, or use HMRC's simplified expenses flat rates: £10 a month for 25 to 50 hours of business use at home, £18 a month for 51 to 100 hours and £26 a month for 101 hours or more. See our guide to home office expenses for the self-employed.