What is this tax relief…

It’s always been the case that if your employer has required you to work from home, and you’ve had additional costs because of it (eg, heating or electricity) then you’re able to claim for these increased costs – known as the working from home (WFH) tax relief. For far more help on this see my moneysavingexpert. com/wfhtaxrelief guide, yet in brief, to claim the tax relief you must have, and declare that you have had, specific extra costs due to working from home. Yet apportioning extra costs, such as heating and electricity, is tough. Due to that, there is a flat rate of £6 a week available to you, which you can get either…

An extra £6/week tax-free from your employer. They don’t have to give you that, and in fact most employers aren’t giving it as they are most likely struggling.

If you’re not getting that from your employer, then you can get £6 tax-relief. To make the process easy, HMRC says that for claims in line with the employers’ payment (ie, £6 a week), you won’t need to keep receipts or prove information (if you have bigger expenses and want to claim more, you would need to prove it).

The tax relief of £6 a week equates to a gain of…

£1.20 a week for a basic 20% rate taxpayer (£62.40 a year) £2.40 a week for a higher 40% rate taxpayer (£124.80 a year) £2.70 a week for a top 45% rate taxpayer (£140.40 a year)

If you’re not the only employee in the house who’s had to work from home, and it’s fair to say costs have increased specifically from each individual, you can all claim it.

To process claims, most employees (including part-timers) can use the microservice at gov.uk. The exception to this is if you do a self-assessment tax form, in which case you can still claim but it’s a different route – see my moneysaving expert.com/ Wfhtaxrelief guide for help with that.

Required to work from home at any point between 6 April 2020 and 5 April 2021? If so and you haven’t claimed yet, you can still do that via the microservice.

In fact, if you started working from home at the start of the first lockdown, on 23 March 2020, just put that date in too. Payment for these past tax years will be via a cheque/bacs. Required to work from home at any point from 6 April 2021 up to 5 April 2022? Again you can claim via the microservice. If also claiming for the last tax year, you can do both at once.

If you’ve already claimed for 2020/21, you must claim again for the 2021/22 tax year, via the same microservice. Relief for the current tax year will be paid via a change in your tax code. This is what tells your employer how much tax to take. The result will be less tax taken off each month for the rest of the year.

It only takes five minutes to do online for free (don’t pay anyone) and I get swamped with messages from people who can’t believe how quickly and easily this happens. Over two million have applied and if you’re thinking, ‘I won’t claim as I don’t feel I deserve it’, why not claim and donate it to a charity that helps those who have struggled?

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