How To Get The Cost Out Of Homeworking – Chapter 6

How To Get The Cost Out Of Homeworking

From a textbook point of view, benefits for working from home may seem to outweigh the disadvantages of working from home. You can work from a comfortable environment; you can have a more flexible schedule and may also generally feel more relaxed and stress-free. But, not to forget, like everything, this too comes at a price. Working from home may seem like it is worth it, but there are some costs you will have to face, no matter how much you try to minimize them.

Main Expenses:

Here are some of the expenses you will have to bear when you’re working from home, but there is some good news if you have a business account you can include part of these costs into your accounts to save yourself from tax.

Rent:

When you're self-employed, you cannot charge your business rent because technically, you are the business. It is, however, true that if you're renting your home from a homeowner, you can be entitled to a share of the rent for your business. This will work if you dedicate a certain area of your house to your office from where you will exclusively be working. If you end up selling your home, if you own it, you will need to pay tax for the number of rooms you were using for business, so keeping your business to a limited number of rooms will be beneficial for you.

Council Tax:

 You will need to contact your local council to get information on how to claim council tax back. Normally, if you use your house for business, you will be able to claim a part of your council tax back. The rates of the council tax will vary according to what they are

set by your local council and the value of your property. However, you may have to pay business rates rather than council tax depending on how much you use your house for business.

Utility Costs:

While you're working in an office environment, you don't have to worry about the costs of electricity for running the systems and lights, or the gas being used in the office kitchen. But while you work from home, you can notice the spike up on your electricity bill at the very least as you start working with more appliances and equipment than you are typically accustomed to.

These costs may increase over time, the more you establish yourself. But lucky for you, you can claim the business proportion of your electricity and gas costs that you're using for lighting and heating your home office....

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