For 2026/27 you cannot claim tax relief for the additional household costs of working from home: new legislation removed the deduction from 6 April 2026. Earlier tax years that are still open can be claimed, and those claims meet the same narrow test as before — you had to work from home, rather than chose to. A tax-free homeworking allowance paid by your employer is a separate thing and is unaffected.
What changed, and when
Until 5 April 2026, an employee whose home was a workplace could deduct the additional household costs of working there, under the general rule for expenses incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of the duties.
From 6 April 2026 that deduction is no longer permitted. Section 360B of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 blocks a deduction for additional household expenses, and HMRC's Employment Income Manual now splits its guidance in two: one page for the treatment up to 5 April 2026, another for the treatment from 6 April 2026 onwards. GOV.UK's claim page puts it in plainer words — for this tax year you cannot claim relief for working from home, and you can still claim for earlier years.
Two things are untouched by the change, and they are the easiest to confuse with it. An employer can still pay a homeworking allowance free of tax under a separate exemption, and the cost of travelling from home to another workplace still has rules of its own.
Who could claim, and who could not
For the years still open, the test is necessity rather than practice. HMRC allowed the relief where your job required you to live far from your employer's premises, or where your employer had no premises at all.
It was not available where you worked from home by choice, and a contract that permits home working counts as choice. Nor was it available because the office was full on the day, or because you preferred to avoid a commute, or because your employer closed the office for some of the week but kept one.
This is much narrower than the rule that applied during the pandemic years, when the relief was opened up temporarily. A great deal of advice written in that period is still online, still describes the wider test, and now also describes a relief that has since been withdrawn. It is the main reason claims are refused.
What an earlier-year claim covers
The relief covered the additional household costs of working from home: the extra gas and electricity used in the room you worked in, and the business share of metered water and of business calls.
It did not cover costs that would have been the same whether or not you worked from home. Rent, a mortgage, council tax and a broadband connection you would have had anyway are all outside it, because none of them is an additional cost caused by the work.
There were two ways to claim, and both still apply to the years that remain open. You can claim a fixed weekly amount, which GOV.UK states on its working from home page, or you can claim the exact additional costs and keep the bills and workings that support them. The exact-cost route is worth the paperwork only where the additional costs are clearly higher than the fixed amount.
What the relief is worth
Tax relief is not a payment of the amount claimed. It reduces the income you are taxed on, so what you get back is the amount claimed multiplied by your rate of tax.
A basic-rate taxpayer gets 20% of the amount claimed. A higher-rate taxpayer gets 40%, and an additional-rate taxpayer 45%. Scottish taxpayers get relief at their own rate, which is a different set of percentages.
Someone who earned less than the Personal Allowance of £12,570 in the year being claimed for gets nothing from it, because there is no tax to relieve.
How a claim reaches you now
While the relief ran, HMRC gave it for the current year by increasing the number in your tax code. Your tax-free pay went up by the amount of the claim, so the tax on each payslip fell slightly for the rest of the year. That route has gone with the relief: for 2026/27 there is nothing to put in the code.
A claim for an earlier year is settled as a repayment instead, because a code cannot reach back into a year that has closed.
A claim allowed through a code used to carry forward into the following year automatically, which is worth knowing if your code looks higher than the standard one. An allowance for working from home that is still sitting in this year's code would be giving relief that is no longer due, and that means tax under-collected now and collected later. Your coding notice shows what the code is built from, line by line.
How to claim for an earlier year
GOV.UK runs its own service for the claim, and it is free. Where you complete a Self Assessment return, the claim goes in the employment expenses section of the return instead; the same expense is not claimed by both routes.
The service asks which tax year you are claiming for and lists the years still open to you, so the time limit is answered there rather than worked out. It also asks you to confirm you had to work from home, and HMRC asks for evidence of that, as well as receipts or bills for an exact-cost claim.
If your employer already pays you
An employer can pay a tax-free amount towards household costs for an employee who works from home under a homeworking arrangement, and the end of the deduction does not change that. Where the payment is being made, the same costs are not also claimed as relief.
Check your payslip before claiming for an earlier year. A homeworking allowance is usually a separate line and is easy to miss, and a claim made on top of one is a claim HMRC will unwind.
Equipment is a different question
Buying a desk, a chair or a monitor was never part of this relief. Equipment you buy yourself for work has its own rules, and where an employer provides equipment for you to use at home, there is usually no tax charge at all as long as private use is not significant.
The two routes are taxed differently, so which one applies is worth checking before you spend rather than afterwards.
A note on refund companies
Claiming through HMRC costs nothing. Companies that offer to make the claim for you charge a share of whatever comes back, and some ask you to sign an assignment that directs future repayments to them as well.
We do not recommend for or against using one. What is worth knowing is that the same claim can be made directly, in a few minutes, and that an assignment can cover more than the claim in front of you.