A teacher tax rebate is tax relief on work costs your school did not pay back. That can cover approved union fees, replacing PE kit, books for teaching A level and above, and travel between school sites. Outside Self Assessment, you can claim online for this tax year and the previous four.
Two rule changes on 6 April 2026 reshaped what teachers can claim. The approved mileage rate for a car rose from 45p to 55p a mile for the first 10,000 miles, and working-from-home relief ended. Claims for earlier tax years don’t change, so mileage driven before that date is still worked out at 45p.
This guide covers classroom and PE teachers, anyone who travels between sites, supply staff, part-time teachers, teaching assistants and lecturers.
Three things change the answer: whether the school’s already paid you back, whether you paid income tax that year, and whether you’re employed through an agency or umbrella company.
If you pay Scottish income tax, your relief is worked out at Scottish rates, so the same claim is worth a slightly different amount.
HMRC’s internal manual has its own section on school teachers’ expenses. Taken together with the general rules for employees, these costs can qualify:
These don’t count:
The working from home tax relief guide covers who could claim before that change.
Whatever you claim, the school mustn’t have paid you back. If it covered part of a cost, only the rest counts.
Tax relief comes off your taxable pay, so it’s worth the cost multiplied by your tax rate, not the cost itself. On a £100 expense, that’s £20 for a basic rate taxpayer and £40 at the higher rate.
Union subscriptions come under professional fees tax relief. The body has to appear on HMRC’s approved list (known as List 3), and you have to have paid the fee yourself rather than the school paying it. Life memberships are excluded.
The list doesn’t treat every union the same way. The National Education Union’s entry carries no restriction, unlike the capped entries below.
The NEU tax rebate page has more on claiming it.
Several other education bodies carry caps. Relief on NASUWT and NAHT subscriptions is limited to two-thirds of the annual fee, and ASCL’s is limited to 85%.
Separate pages cover the NASUWT tax rebate and the ASCL tax rebate in more detail.
To work out your own figure, multiply the relievable part of the fee by your tax rate. With a two-thirds cap, relief is worth about 13p in every pound paid to a basic rate taxpayer, against 20p where relief covers the full fee.
Lecturers who are members of the University and College Union have a dedicated page on UCU fees tax relief.
If your contract requires you to teach or supervise PE or games, HMRC’s teachers’ guidance says the cost of replacing and maintaining recognisable sports kit is normally allowable. Your first set isn’t covered, because HMRC’s general clothing rules exclude the initial cost of buying work clothes.
The kit has to look like sportswear. Trainers and tracksuits shouldn’t be turned down just because they could pass as everyday clothes, according to the same guidance. Towels, T-shirts, sweatshirts and outdoor wear that wouldn’t read as sports kit away from school don’t qualify.
You can claim what you actually spent on replacement kit, with receipts. HMRC’s teacher guidance doesn’t mention a flat rate for games kit.
Its general list gives jobs not named on it a flat £60 a year for cleaning, repairing or replacing work clothing, with no receipts needed, and teaching isn’t named.
If HMRC accepts that £60 for your kit, it’s worth £24 a year to a higher rate taxpayer. At 2026/27 Scottish rates it would be worth £12.60 at the 21% intermediate rate and £25.20 at the 42% higher rate.
Specialist clothing outside PE follows the same clean, repair or replace rule. Specialist clothing tax relief has a page of its own.
HMRC’s manual is blunt about teachers and travel. It expects most teachers to have very little travel that qualifies, and the commute from home to your school isn’t part of it.
What does qualify is travel between workplaces within the same job. HMRC’s own teacher example is a split-site school where the employer doesn’t provide transport between the sites.
A peripatetic teacher mileage claim works on the same principle, covering drives between the schools one employer sends you to.
Since 6 April 2026, HMRC’s approved rate has been 55p for each of your first 10,000 business miles in a car or van, dropping to 25p beyond that. Relief covers the gap between that figure and whatever your employer pays you towards it.
Here’s how that works for a teacher driving 4 miles between two sites, there and back twice a week, over a 39-week school year:
Changing the distance or the school’s rate changes every figure above.
The mileage tax relief calculator gives a starting figure from your business miles and tax rate, but it doesn’t ask what the school pays, so take that off yourself.
Supply teachers can claim fees, kit and books on the same terms as anyone else. Travel is where the position splits, depending on who employs you.
Since 6 April 2016, workers placed through an agency or umbrella company (HMRC calls both employment intermediaries) are treated as starting a separate employment with each placement. The journey from home to that school then counts as ordinary commuting, with no relief.
Showing that nobody supervises, directs or controls how you work can take a placement outside the rule, but HMRC’s starting assumption is that someone does.
For many umbrella company workers, HMRC’s guidance says that control test doesn’t even need considering. An agency can only treat you as outside the rule with evidence from another party, and your own word that nobody controls your work isn’t enough.
Two things survive the rule. Travel during the working day, as part of the placement itself, can still qualify. If a school or local authority employs you directly, the ordinary rules apply, including relief for travel to a temporary workplace.
Relief only works against income tax you’ve actually paid in that tax year. That’s the limit that bites on a part-time teacher tax rebate, a teaching assistant tax rebate, or for anyone whose pay sits close to the personal allowance.
Using 2026/27 figures, the personal allowance is £12,570 across the UK. Outside Scotland, basic rate tax is 20% above it, and in Scotland the first band above it is the 19% starter rate.
Take two teaching assistants outside Scotland, each with £60 of allowable expenses:
Lower pay doesn’t change what counts, only how much relief you can use. A lecturer tax rebate follows the same employee rules, so the job title matters less than who paid and whether tax was due.
If you came to teach in the UK from abroad, the overseas teachers UK tax back page covers your position.
The main route is HMRC’s online service, reached from the HMRC tax relief for employees pages, which checks whether you can claim before you start.
Self Assessment is the route in two situations: when your job expenses for a tax year come to more than £2,500, or when you already complete a Self Assessment tax return. In either case the claim goes on the return, not through the online service or a P87.
A postal claim is possible on form P87, as long as your total expenses for each tax year come to £2,500 or less.
The P87 form explainer covers filling in the paper version.
Teacher tax rebate evidence goes in with the claim, and what HMRC wants depends on the cost:
Union and professional fees need receipts or other proof of what you paid for each one.
Replacement kit and other clothing claimed at what it actually cost needs receipts.
Flat rate clothing claims need no evidence at all.
Books and other items need receipts or similar proof that names what you bought and shows you paid for it.
Mileage needs a log giving each journey’s reason and its start and end postcodes, with a separate log for each job if you have more than one.
The same evidence applies to a postal claim, and HMRC’s guidance on postal claims lists it by expense type. If what you actually spent turns out different from an estimate you claimed, you have to tell HMRC and send evidence.
Claims stretch over this tax year and the four that came before it. A tax year ends on 5 April, and you have four years from that date to claim for it, so the oldest year drops out each April.
Past years are settled with either a tax code change or a refund of the overpaid tax. If a P800 tax calculation arrives, it explains how the refund reaches you.
Relief for the year you’re in usually arrives through a new tax code instead, and HMRC sends that code to your employer. The explainer on how a tax code is worked out covers what each part of the new code means.
Start with the costs that can qualify: approved union fees, replacement games kit for PE staff, books for A level teaching and above, and travel between workplaces. Marking at home doesn’t count, and working-from-home relief ended on 6 April 2026.
Check your union’s cap, since NASUWT, NAHT and ASCL members get relief on only part of the fee. For supply teachers placed through an agency or umbrella company, HMRC treats home-to-school travel as commuting unless it’s shown otherwise.
Claim online unless your expenses top £2,500 or you already file a Self Assessment return. Keep receipts and a mileage log as you go, because the evidence goes in with the claim.
The teacher tax rebate FAQs cover individual unions in more detail.
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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