You can claim tax relief on things like:

• Purchasing work uniform* and clothing

• Cleaning work uniform and clothing

• Tools

• Business travel

• Professional fees and subscriptions

• Repairing or replacing equipment you need to do your job

Tax relief is available on other things depending on your industry and occupation, check here for a table that shows what is allowable.

If your employer pays towards your expense, you ned to deduct that from what you claim.

Using your own vehicle for work

You’ll need to have records of your business mileage, including:

• locations of your journeys

• distances you’ve travelled

• the total amount of mileage allowance payments you’ve had

Mileage

We use Tripcatcher to capture our mileage on company and personal vehicles, it is really quick and easy and integrates with Xero, for more information, click here.

Using a company vehicle for work

You’ll need a summary of your calculation with any claim for relief on what you’ve spent, Tripcatcher is ideal for this, click here. 

Hotel and meal expenses

You’ll need your receipts as proof of expenditure.

What Is Tax Relief

Tax relief reduces the amount of tax you have to pay.

The amount of tax relief you get will not be the same as the amount of expenses you have claimed for. You’ll get tax relief based on the rate at which you pay tax.

For example, if you can claim £60 and paid tax at a rate of 20% in that year, you’ll get tax relief of £12.

If you complete an Income Tax self-assessment tax return, you should claim through this.

If you don’t submit an Income Tax self-assessment tax return, you can claim by one of the following:

Online

If you haven’t already, you will need to set up a Government Gateway, it shows:

• your PAYE tax overview

• your  National Insurance

• your annual tax summary

When you use this service, you’ll:

• get a reference number to use to track the progress of your form

• be able to tell HMRC about multiple tax years and up to 5 different jobs

Include all expenses for the tax year you want to claim for. The amount shown on the service summary page is your total expenses for the year. HMRC use this to work out any relief due to you.

You can save your progress and come back to it later using this option.

*What a uniform is

A uniform is a set of specialised clothing that’s recognisable as identifying someone as having a particular occupation, for example nurse or police uniforms.

A uniform is not clothing of a similar design or colour that you must wear for work (for example, a bank who wants to promote its corporate image by requiring all counter staff to wear a shirt or blouse in their corporate colours).

You can claim tax relief if you wash the uniform given to you by your employer, unless your employer provides a laundering service and you choose not to use it and wash your uniform yourself.

Only nurses and midwives can claim for replacing shoes, socks and underwear.

You cannot claim tax relief for everyday clothing, even if you wear it for work.