What can you
actually claim?

What does wholly and exclusively mean?

It is the test every claim has to pass: the cost must be incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade. A van used only for jobs passes. A coat you also wear at weekends does not.

Where a cost genuinely splits — a phone, a car, a room at home — you claim the business proportion and keep a note of how you worked it out. HMRC does not expect a stopwatch; it expects a method that is reasonable and applied consistently.

What is allowable?

• —Stock, materials and anything bought for resale.
• —Tools, equipment and the software you run the business on.
• —Business travel — fuel, fares, parking, and vehicle running costs.
• —A proportion of phone and broadband based on business use.
• —Use of home, either apportioned or at the flat rate.
• —Insurance, professional subscriptions and trade body membership.
• —Accountancy and legal fees relating to the trade.
• —Advertising, your website, and the cost of quoting for work.
• —Bank charges and interest on business borrowing.
• —Protective clothing and branded uniform.
• —Training that maintains the skills you already trade on.

What is never allowable?

• —Client entertaining. A real cost, and specifically not deductible.
• —Ordinary clothing, even if you only wear it for work.
• —Your own wages or drawings.
• —Fines and penalties, including parking tickets picked up on a job.
• —Travel between home and a regular workplace.
• —Anything personal that happened to be paid from the business account.

Which claims do people miss?

• —The trading allowance — the first £1,000 of trading income can be covered by an allowance instead of expenses, which wins if your costs are lower than that.
• —Use of home, when the paperwork happens at the kitchen table and nobody thinks it counts.
• —Bank and card processing fees, trivial individually and material across a year.
• —Subscriptions bought on a personal card and never put through the books.
• —Capital allowances on tools and equipment, which are claimed differently from running costs.
• —Pre-trading expenses — costs in the seven years before you started can often be treated as incurred on day one.