From: "Tim" 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Tax allowance for costs of working from home?
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 11:53:54 +0000 (UTC)

"Ronald Raygun" wrote
> This "if you pay someone" is important, the point being that if you
> did not pay someone, and did the cleaning yourself, and paid yourself
> a notional charge for providing this service to yourself but really on
> behalf of your employer, then although wearing your office worker hat
> you could in theory claim the cleaning cost as an expense, the trouble
> is that you would receive this as real income wearing your cleaner's
> hat.  That's why you can't claim the cost of employing yourself as an
> expense.

Surely you could, if you *really* wanted to?  *But* - you would need to
ensure that you pay the correct tax for your "second employment" as well,
the one where you are the cleaner.  Overall, there is no real difference
(you'd pay the same tax overall) - but you might want to do it eg to keep
separate account of expenses here & expenses there??

"Ronald Raygun" wrote
>   Tends to work on room count

This always puzzles me a little.  Room sizes can vary substantially in a
house - eg you could concievably have a large room 30ft by 20ft, and a 'box'
room only 7ft square.  One is 600sqft, the other only 50sqft.  Suppose you
have just 3 other 'rooms' (excluding kitchen/bathrooms).

Suppose you worked in the box room.  Are you claiming too much expense for
light/heat/etc??  [ (1/5) = 20% of total.]

Suppose you worked in the large room.  Hmmm - costs a lot to heat & light.
I know, why don't you add some partition walls to split it into 12 separate
'rooms' (each of equivalent size to the box room).
You now have 16 rooms in total - can you claim 12/16 = 75% of household
expenses??!  :-)

"Ronald Raygun" wrote
> excluding bathrooms and kitchen (unless kitchen is also dining room)

What about a large hall?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote
> So there would be a difference between using half the study all the
> time and all the study half the time for CGT purposes, but not for
> income tax purposes?

Good question!  [I don't know the answer.]