House bills: who can claim them?

gwenb

Hello,
I have recently attended a webinar about self-employed expenses and an interesting question arose: "Being self-employed and working from home, what house bills can I claim as allowable expenses considering the fact that it's my husband whose account the bills are paid from? Some bills are in both our names but some others are in his name only"
I would have thought that regardless of whose name is on the bill or which bank account a bill is paid from, being married, the self-employed partner could claim part of the bills as allowable expenses. Can anyone clarify please? Hopefully bring some legal background into it as well?
Thank you.

Monsoon

If you're married then they are joint expenses, it doesn't matter who pays them. Just claim as normal.

I don't have a legal basis for that, but that's always what has been done. I've wondered myself on occasion and would be interested to hear if anyone has ever done it different.

payrollpro

Best way is to stick to the HMRC guidance at https://www.gov.uk/simpler-income-tax-simplified-expenses/working-from-home and ignore the issue of whose bill it is. Simplified expenses were introduced to get around the work involved in arriving at a suitable figure.