This might seem a silly question, but I have just completed my first year in business and I am finishing off my year end accounts. I work from home, so what would be a fair way to allocate the cost of heat/light, telephone, broadband costs etc., to the business. I work 5 day week. Would it be the toal cost divided by the days worked, then DR office expenses and CR capital? Any help and advice would be most appreciated.
My understanding is you take the number of rooms you use, divide that by the number of rooms in your house (excluding hall and bathrooms) then pro rata that for the time you use.
So if your home has 7 rooms and you use 1 for 5 days out of 7, that would be roughly 10% of all bills.
Alternatively you can go for the standard £3 per week.
The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, and are not representative of any organisation I have any involvement with.
You might want to have a read of HMRCs manual first as this provides information on what they deem to be acceptable, and it also discusses capital gains implications.