I'm self-employed freelancer, and primarily work from home. I work more than 101 hours per month from home. I'm trying to calculate the proportion of my home expenses (energy bills, council tax, mortgage interest) that I can use as tax relief.
Using the simplified expenses route (£26 per month), while simple, the amount of £312 per year is lower than calculating the actual expenses.
How does calculating the actual expenses work in practice? My home has 4 bedrooms and 1 living room. I use one of the rooms as my office exclusively for my freelancing. This means I use up energy and broadband from that room.
So if my energy bill for the year was let's say £1000, does that mean I can claim £200 (1000/5) as expenses? Or is it £250 (1000/4), counting only the 4 bedrooms? Is it as simple as dividing the total amount by number of rooms, or do I need to do something more complicated such as calculating the office dimensions as a percentage of the full house size?
Using 20% of my home expenses allows me to claim more than using the simplified route, but I'm not sure if it's simply calculating the 20% in my case, or if there is more to it.
I also assume I can claim tax relief on proportion of the council tax and mortgage interest, based on whatever percentage my office is meant to take (by dimension or by number of rooms).
