Self-employed - cost of new office - allowable expense?

Fitz
Fitz Registered Posts: 26 Regular contributor ⭐
in General accounting discussion
One of my self-employed clients works from home as a graphic designer.

He recently converted part of his house into an office. Previously he had been working at his kitchen table!

Can I claim the conversion costs as an allowable expense?

Comments

  • jamesm96
    jamesm96 Registered Posts: 523
    Fitz wrote: »
    One of my self-employed clients works from home as a graphic designer.

    He recently converted part of his house into an office. Previously he had been working at his kitchen table!

    Can I claim the conversion costs as an allowable expense?

    You have to be a bit careful if you have a portion of your home which is exclusively set aside for business purposes because it'll cause issues when you come to sell the house if you're claiming PPR and you might end up with a CGT bill.

    I'd be inclined not to include the full cost of the conversion but to calculate a very accurate 'Use of Home' expense, and also include as many fixtures and fittings as you can.
  • groundy
    groundy Registered Posts: 495 Dedicated contributor 🦉
    Agree with Mike
  • Monsoon
    Monsoon Registered Posts: 4,071 Beyond epic contributor 🧙‍♂️
    Agree also.

    The way I explain it is once you have a bare room (plastered, electrics done etc) then your costs of turning that into an office are ok.

    If you rented a commercial office, you would rent a bare room (probably) and everything on top of that would be allowable (broadly speaking, ignoring any major work to be done)

Categories

Privacy Policy