Most employees can no longer claim working from home tax relief from HMRC. The relief ended on 5 April 2026, making 2025/26 the last claimable year. Self-employed people can still claim home-working costs through Self Assessment. If you qualified in an earlier year, you can still backdate a claim through PAYE, up to four years after that year ended.
At the 2025 Autumn Budget, the Chancellor quietly closed a tax break that around 300,000 people had been claiming.
That decision scrapped working from home tax relief for employees from 6 April 2026.
If you’ve claimed it before, or expected to this year, the rules have shifted under your feet.
The old, flat-rate working from home tax relief let employees recover a slice of their higher household bills. Most have now lost that option entirely.
Yet plenty of people can still benefit, which is exactly where working from home tax relief gets confusing.
It even covers what your employer can still legitimately do. This working from home tax relief guide explains what ended, who qualifies, and how to reclaim earlier years.
The self-employed, by contrast, are completely untouched by the change.
Knowing where you stand on working from home tax relief matters most if you’re owed money for a past year. The short version is blunt: the easy years are over, but the door hasn’t closed.
It’s now law. From 6 April 2026, HMRC removed the deduction employees could claim for additional household costs when required to work from home.
This applies whether home working is your choice or a contractual requirement.
Even employees with no office to go to can no longer make a claim. Working from home tax relief eligibility rested on being required to work at home, not choosing to.
According to HMRC, the measure inserts a new rule into the tax legislation that blocks the deduction outright.
The financial hit is modest but real. Basic-rate taxpayers lose around £62 a year, and higher-rate taxpayers about £124, according to GOV.UK figures.
Anyone who claimed working from home tax relief in the past should also check their tax code still reflects reality.
For more on what the end of the relief means in practice, see the guide to the working from home allowance changes. It’s an easy thing to forget once payroll changes.
HMRC’s reasoning comes down to one number. After reviewing claims, the tax office found that over half were ineligible.
That level of non-compliance, in HMRC’s view, made the relief hard to justify.
The pandemic is largely to blame for the confusion. During the 2020/21 and 2021/22 tax years, eligibility was widened so that almost anyone sent home could claim relief for a full year.
Millions did, and many kept claiming after the temporary rules ended.
The flat rate itself dates back further than most people realise. It started at £4 a week in 2011 and rose to £6 a week from 2020, where it stayed.
Frankly, this catches a lot of people out, because the easy COVID-era claim felt permanent.
It wasn’t meant to last. HMRC says the goal now is fairness across the tax system.
Removing the working from home allowance, rather than reforming it, was the cleaner option. The result is a simpler rule that few people welcomed.
Here’s the good news if you run your own business. The abolition hits employees only, so sole traders and partners are completely unaffected.
If you’re self-employed, you can still deduct a share of your home-working costs as a business expense. There are two ways to work out the figure.
The simpler route is HMRC’s flat-rate method, which sets a monthly amount based on hours worked at home:
One catch trips people up. The flat rate doesn’t include phone or internet, so you claim the business proportion of those bills separately.
A quick example shows how it adds up.
Work 40 hours from home for ten months and 60 hours in two busy months, and you can claim £136 for the year. The alternative is to apportion your actual costs.
You can also claim a business share of things like council tax, internet and mortgage interest, which often beats the flat rate.
Most sole traders pick whichever method gives the bigger deduction. If you’re close to the 25-hour threshold, it’s worth checking both before you file.
Either way, you’re claiming WFH tax relief on self assessment rather than through a separate HMRC form.
If you’re employed, one route survives the cull. Your employer can still pay you for the extra costs of working from home without any tax or National Insurance landing on either side.
GOV.UK confirms this exemption is untouched by the changes. Employers can hand over up to £6 a week, or £26 a month, free of tax and receipts.
There’s a catch worth knowing.
The payment has to run through payroll, and there needs to be a genuine homeworking agreement in place. This matters most for hybrid working tax relief questions, where staff split time between home and office.
Many employers are now updating their policies to fill the gap HMRC left behind.
If your costs aren’t reimbursed, there’s no longer a working from home tax relief claim to fall back on. That’s the part most employees find hardest to accept.
It’s worth asking your employer directly if they don’t already offer this. A short conversation could recover the same £6 a week you’ve just lost from HMRC.
If you’re owed a backdated payment, it helps to know the sums involved. The amounts were modest, but they added up over several years.
So how much is working from home tax relief actually worth?
The relief was based on an agreed flat rate of £6 a week, which employees could claim without providing any receipts at all. You didn’t get £6 in your pocket — you simply got tax relief on it.
The figures broke down neatly by tax band:
Claiming the full £6 a week working from home allowance needed no evidence at all. Going above it meant keeping receipts to prove the working from home tax relief flat rate wasn’t enough.
Those sums are exactly what a successful backdated claim hands back to you.
Even with the relief gone, you might still be owed money for past years. You can backdate working from home tax relief for years when you genuinely qualified.
The window stretches back four tax years. In practice, claims for working from home tax relief 4 years back are still open, as long as you met the rules at the time.
Two pandemic years had looser rules, but their deadlines have now passed.
The 2020/21 claim closed in April 2025, and 2021/22 closed in April 2026. Still, the real test is eligibility: am I eligible for working from home tax relief for those years?
For eligible years still open, you make a P87 working from home claim and send it to HMRC. Since 14 October 2024, you also have to include evidence before HMRC processes it.
HMRC now expects you to show three things:
Voluntary home working won’t pass that test. A successful claim can come back as a working from home tax rebate P800 calculation.
Check that your working from home tax code hasn’t kept the old allowance baked in, or you could pay the wrong tax. If in doubt, working from home tax relief HMRC guidance sets out exactly where you stand.
The headline is simple enough. Working from home tax relief is gone for employees from April 2026, and there’s no direct replacement.
If you’re self-employed, your home-office deductions carry on as before. Where your employer reimburses costs, that money stays tax-free.
The one job worth doing today is checking past years.
If you qualified before April 2026 and didn’t claim, a backdated claim could still be waiting. Learning how to claim working from home tax relief for those years is the next step.
Treat this as your working from home tax rebate guide to the new rules, not a prompt to give up. For the finer detail, the free income tax guides set out other reliefs you might claim alongside it.
The WFH essentials in one place:
Use these as your checklist before you do anything else.
These questions cover the practical points the 2026 change raises for employees, directors and the self-employed.
The 2025/26 tax year, which ended on 5 April 2026, was the last one employees could claim for. If you were eligible and haven’t yet claimed, you may still be within the time limit.
The submission process has been changing as HMRC retires the old forms, so check the current route on GOV.UK before you start.
Company directors count as employees for this relief, so the personal claim route has closed for them too. A director can’t claim household costs from HMRC any more than other employees can.
Their company can still reimburse genuine home-working costs tax-free, and separate arrangements like a formal rental agreement may suit some directors.
Not on its own — HMRC doesn’t automatically remove the allowance from your code when the relief ends. If it stays, you’d keep getting relief you’re no longer entitled to, and could owe the difference later.
Sign in to your personal tax account, check your current code, and tell HMRC to take the home-working allowance out.
There’s no legal duty on an employer to reimburse home-working costs, so it comes down to company policy. Some employers pay the allowance willingly, while others leave staff to absorb the expense.
Because the payment is tax-free up to £6 a week and simple to run through payroll, a reasonable employer may well agree.
For ordinary household running costs, the answer for employees is no, as that route has closed. The relief on heating, lighting and similar bills has gone for good.
Equipment is different: if your employer provides things you need for the job, like a desk or work phone, that stays tax-free.
Written by:
Tax Rebate Services Editorial Team
Reviewed by:
Tony Shanks, qualified Taxation Technician (ATT)
This page provides general information, not personalised tax advice. Tax rules and allowances change — for help with your own circumstances, speak to a qualified adviser or HMRC.
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