The Wholesale Forums

[VisitorX]

hi,

as ebay sellers work from home can they count part of electricy, gas etc bills as allowable expense when filing tax-return? if yes how to calculate the percentage? also if we are to clain any such allowable expense do we have to be on bussiness rate for the council tax for that perticular room/area? if notifying council about this is a must then i guess we cant claim such bills as allowable right??

thanks looking forward for some valubale suggestions.

[MustHaveMobiles]

My best advice would be to consult an accountant, they are the ones that will save you the maximum amount of money. The costs are generally negligible compared to the savings..

[VisitorX]

well i havent earned much and hiring an accountant is out of the question for now...

[Boro97]

If you are using your home as a buisness i'm sure you can only claim 25% of your bills,
You can always ask the tax office how much you can claim they will tell you .

[Jez]

This was discussed at a recent "keeping records for tax" course I went on run by HMRC. You can claim part of your heating & electricity bills but it is so complex I'm not going to even bother, unless my accountant can do anything for me when I organise myself one.

Take Gas heating bill Basically, you work out how many rooms are heated in your house, say you have 6 rooms, one of which you use as part of the business, heating on 12 hours a day? So that comes down to a sixth of the bill, then say you use that room for 6 hours a day, it's then a twelth of the bill! You need to be able to show your workings if you ever get inspected as well.

I presented the argument that prior to working at home I was working for someone else so I didn't need the heating on in the winter during the day and now I will have to heat the whole house, the answer was "tough".

Another one is house insurance, although a lot easier to work out. You have to get a quote for not working from home and a quote with you working from home and the difference you can claim as an expense.

However, I was also told that in no way can you claim house repairs, the example used was a hole in the roof, as even if you weren't running a business from home you would've fixed it anyway. But I have since found out a new law started this year saying you CAN claim a % of that roof repair as a business expense. This is one of the reasons I want an accountant as I don't trust what HMRC tell me.

[MustHaveMobiles]

Originally Posted by VisitorX

well i havent earned much and hiring an accountant is out of the question for now...

Have you spoken to an accountant regarding the fees yet? Most fees can be offset anyway and what they allow you to claim/save should more than cover their fees, there are always costs that occur in business but I would never see an accountant fee as this it has got to be one of the must haves of business.

I realise that when income is low these fees can wipe out any profit but in the long term they pay for themselves many times over, my accountant is my third love in the world behind the missus and my porsche ......and I'm serious there!