If you run your business from your kitchen table, spare room or garden studio, you are quietly subsidising HMRC every month you fail to claim what you are owed. Understanding home working expenses self employed women can legitimately claim will lower your tax bill, and the rules for the 2025/26 tax year are more generous than many sole traders realise.
According to Statista figures published in 2026, over 2.8 million men and over 1.5 million women were self-employed in the UK. A large share of those women work from home, either full time or alongside caring responsibilities. Yet HMRC data and accountancy surveys consistently suggest sole traders under-claim on household costs, often because the rules feel opaque. This guide sets out exactly what you can put through your Self Assessment for the year ending 5 April 2026, using current HMRC rates.
The two methods for home working expenses self employed sole traders can use
HMRC gives you a choice. You can either claim a flat rate under the simplified expenses scheme, or you can work out the actual proportion of your household bills that relate to your business. At the end of the tax year you use the flat rates for vehicle mileage, working from home, and living at your business premises to work out your expenses, and include these amounts in the total for your expenses in your Self Assessment tax return.
The simplified method is quicker and needs no receipts. The actual-cost method is fiddlier but often produces a larger deduction, particularly if you have a dedicated office space and high energy bills. You can switch between methods from one tax year to the next, so it is worth running both calculations before you file.
Who qualifies
To use either method you must be genuinely self-employed as a sole trader or partner. Directors of limited companies use different rules. HMRC’s deduction is based on the number of hours spent wholly and exclusively on core business activities in the home, and is only available if these hours exceed 25 per month. Use of the flat rate deduction is optional.
HMRC simplified expenses flat rates for 2025/26
The simplified scheme uses a tiered monthly rate based on how many hours you actually work from home. Under HMRC’s simplified expenses regime, self-employed individuals can claim £10 per month if you work from home 25 to 50 hours monthly, £18 per month if you work from home 51 to 100 hours monthly, and £26 per month if you work from home more than 101 hours monthly.
These rates cover heat, light and power. They do not include your broadband, phone, rent or council tax, which you claim separately using a fair business proportion.
A worked example. If you are a freelance copywriter putting in around 30 hours a week at your dining table, you clear the 101-hour threshold every month. That produces £26 x 12 = £312 for the tax year. Add a business share of your mobile bill and broadband and you have a straightforward claim with no need to trawl through utility statements.
When simplified expenses fall short
The flat rate can be miserly if you run a heat-hungry business, such as a home bakery, ceramics studio or beauty room. It also under-rewards anyone with a large dedicated office. Full apportionment of £90 per month for utilities, at 50 per cent business use, gives £45 per month, whereas the HMRC flat rate for 101 or more hours is £26 per month. Always run both numbers.
Actual cost apportionment for home working expenses self employed traders
HMRC says that you need to apportion the running costs of your home on a “fair and reasonable” basis between the private element of that cost, the part that relates to you actually living there, and the business element. In practice, most accountants split by rooms and hours.
Take a four-bedroom flat where one bedroom is used as your studio. Ignoring kitchens, bathrooms and hallways, that is one out of, say, five habitable rooms, or 20%. If you use that room for business 40 hours out of a 168-hour week, you apply a further time fraction. So the business proportion of your electricity bill is 20% x (40/168) = roughly 4.8%.
Bills you can apportion in this way include:
- Gas, electricity and oil for heating and lighting
- Metered water where business use is significant
- Council tax
- Rent, or mortgage interest only, never the capital repayment
- Home insurance, where the policy covers business use
- Broadband and landline, based on usage
- General repairs to the room used for business
Only the fair business portion of household bills is allowable. Mortgage capital repayments are not allowable, only the interest element can be apportioned, and general household furniture used personally cannot be claimed.
Keeping records HMRC will accept
Keep a copy of your calculations, as well as the original bills and receipts, in case HMRC requests them. A simple spreadsheet listing rooms, hours and monthly apportioned amounts is usually enough. If you are ever asked to justify a claim, that working paper is what an inspector wants to see.
Other home working expenses self employed women often miss
Beyond the household bills, several categories of spending are wholly allowable and sit outside the simplified expenses calculation. These are worth combing through before you file.
- Office equipment. Laptops, printers, desks, chairs and lighting bought for business use.
- Software subscriptions. Accounting packages, design tools, email platforms and cloud storage.
- Business phone line or mobile. The full cost if the contract is in the business name, or a fair proportion if it is personal.
- Stationery and postage. Everyday consumables including printer ink and packaging.
- Business insurance. Public liability, professional indemnity and contents cover for equipment.
- Training courses. Where they update existing skills rather than teach a new trade.
If you use your car for client visits, deliveries or trips to the post office, you can also claim mileage. HMRC’s mileage rates for cars and vans are 55p per mile for the first 10,000 miles in the tax year (new rate from 1st April). Keep a log of dates, destinations and business purpose.
The exclusive-use trap and capital gains tax
A word of caution. If you designate a room as exclusively for business, HMRC may argue you have lost some of the private residence relief that shelters your home from capital gains tax when you sell. The safest approach for most sole traders is to ensure the room has some personal use, however modest, such as a sofa bed for guests or shelves of personal books. This keeps your CGT position intact while still allowing a fair apportionment.
This nuance is one of the many reasons a short annual conversation with an accountant pays for itself, particularly if your business is growing or you are thinking about incorporating.
Key dates and how to claim home working expenses self employed on Self Assessment
You claim these deductions in the self-employment pages of your Self Assessment return. The final date for online submission of Self Assessment tax returns for the 2024/25 tax year is 31 January 2026, or 30 December 2025 if you want HMRC to collect tax through your PAYE tax code.
For anyone new to self-employment, if you have never submitted a tax return before, you need to register for self-assessment by 5 October 2026 if your first year of trading was 2025/26. Missing that deadline triggers automatic penalties.
A practical checklist before you file:
- Add up hours worked from home each month and pick the correct simplified rate.
- Run the actual-cost calculation using your bills and room usage.
- Use whichever method gives the larger, defensible figure.
- Save your working paper, bills and receipts for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline, as HMRC requires.
- Enter the total in the allowable expenses box on your return.
Home working expenses self employed women claim through HMRC are one of the simplest ways to reduce a tax bill without any grey areas, provided you keep clean records. Whether you pick the flat rate or the apportionment route, the discipline of tracking your hours and bills each month makes filing in January far less painful, and often puts several hundred pounds back into your business.
For more practical guidance on running a business from your kitchen table, read our companion pieces on starting a business from home, calculating taxes for self-employment income, and our overview of choosing between sole trader and limited company status.