How to save on gas and electricity bills when you work from home

Working from home has many advantages but at this time of year, having to bear the cost of cranking up the heating and turning on the lights in the middle of the afternoon isn’t one of them.

If you’re reluctant to receive an exorbitant energy bill just in time for Self Assessment, you might be thinking about wearing your winter woolies to brave it through the cold, dark days. Fear not! there is a more comfortable way to save on gas and electricity bills when you work from home.

Claiming tax relief on energy bills

HMRC allows you to use a “reasonable method” to claim a proportion of the gas and electricity costs in the part of your home that you use for business. Here’s how you work it out:

1. Count all the rooms in your house

Count all the “normal living spaces” in your home - in other words, exclude bathrooms and hallways. If your office is separate from the main house, for example, in the garden, and is billed separately, you should treat it as a one-roomed house. If its utility costs are included in the rest of your household bills, treat it as an additional room.

2. Identify the rooms that you work in

You need to work out what percentage of time spent in each room is business and personal. If you spend ten hours a day in your living room, nine hours for personal time and one hour for business, then 90% is personal and 10% is business.

If you work in a dedicated room, such as a home office, you might well spend 100% of your time in there for business. However, you should be aware that if you have an entire room dedicated to business use, you will need to pay Capital Gains tax on it if you sell your home. A way around this is to make the room double as something else, like a music room or a workshop.

3. Divide the cost of your bills between the rooms in your house

There is no official guidance on this calculation other than that your method should be “fair and reasonable”. One suggestion could be to take each of your bills separately and then divide the cost evenly between the number of rooms in your house. For example, a five room house with a gas bill of £460 will come to a cost of £92 per room (£460 ∕ 5 rooms = £92 per room).

Another method could be to work out the percentage of floor space for each room and multiply that by the total cost of the bill. For example, if your office takes up 10% of your home’s overall floor space and your electricity bill is £300, the room cost would be 10% x £300 = £30.

4. Apply the percentage of work use to the relevant room costs

So far you’ve worked out:

• the percentage of time you spend working in each room
• for each bill, the total cost that applies to each room

Now you can reduce your gas and electricity bills by working out the business cost of each and claiming them as an expense on your Self Assessment tax return. For example, if you spend 90% of your time working in your home office and the total cost of heating that room is £92 you would claim:

£92 x 90% = £82.80 as business expenses

And if in the same room the cost of electricity is £30:

£30 x 90% = £27 as business expense

That’s a total of £109.80 saved on your energy bills. Not bad!

Can I use this method for other bills?

Yes, you can! Find out everything you need to know about claiming expenses for the business use of your home.

The flat rate method

The flat rate method is a simple alternative to claiming the costs of energy bills and is available to sole traders and partnerships where the partners are individuals, not limited companies. It allows businesses to claim a set amount of tax relief for the business use of their home depending on the number of hours spent working at home each month. The rates are:

Bear in mind that costs calculated using the flat rate method might not be as high as the other methods suggested above.

Looking for an easy way to manage your business expenses? Take a closer look at expenses in FreeAgent.