Self-employed expenses: what you can claim, and how to prove it

What counts as a self-employed expense?

A cost you pay to run the business. HMRC lets you take it off your income before your profit, and therefore your tax, is worked out. If you also use the thing privately, only the business share counts.

That is nearly the whole rule. Your van insurance counts. Half your phone bill might. Your weekly shop does not, however many site lunches came out of it.

Here is the part that catches people. On your Self Assessment return you type your expenses in as totals. Nobody asks for a single receipt. HMRC's own guidance says you do not send proof when you file, and that you must keep records of all your business expenses in case they ask later.

HMRC never asks for the receipt when you claim. It asks when it checks, and by then the slip has faded.

Later can be a long time. Records are kept for at least five years after the 31 January deadline for the tax year they belong to. A 2025 to 2026 return is due by 31 January 2027, so its receipts are kept until the end of January 2032.

What can I claim, and what does HMRC refuse?

HMRC groups allowable costs under nine headings, and gives its own examples under each. This is that list, shortened, with a link to the full version on GOV.UK.

A capital allowance is how the cost of something that lasts for years is taken off your profit. Which route applies depends on whether you use the cash basis or traditional accounting, and that is a question for whoever does your books rather than for this page.

The refusals are shorter, and they are where most honest mistakes come from.

In HMRC's words, you cannot claim for entertaining clients, suppliers and customers, for everyday clothing even if you wear it for work, for travel between home and work, for fines or penalty charges, or for gym membership.

Everyday clothing is the one people argue with. A pair of work trousers you could wear to the pub is everyday clothing. Safety boots, hi-vis and a uniform with the business's name on it are on the other side of the line.

Can I claim my van, my home and my phone?

Almost always on the things you use for work and for life: the van, the home, the phone. For two of them HMRC offers a choice between adding up real costs and using a flat rate, and the choice has rules.

The van or the car

You can claim the business share of what the vehicle really costs to run, or use HMRC's flat rate per business mile. With the flat rate you cannot also claim fuel, insurance or repairs for that vehicle, though parking and train fares still go on top. And once you use the flat rate for a vehicle, you keep using it for as long as that vehicle works for the business.

The rate itself went up on 6 April 2026, after years without moving. That is why this page links to it instead of printing it: a figure remembered from last year is already wrong.

Working from home

If the kitchen table is where the invoices get written, part of your household bills can count. HMRC asks you to find a reasonable way to split them, for example by the number of rooms you use for work or the time you spend working there. If you work from home for 25 hours a month or more you can use a flat monthly amount instead, and phone and internet are still worked out separately.

The phone

Only the business share of the bill. HMRC's own example is a phone: bills of £200 for the year, £70 of it business calls, and £70 is what you claim.

Meals and training

HMRC's travel list names meals on overnight business trips. A sandwich on an ordinary working day is not on it. Training counts when it keeps up skills you already use in the business, and not when it is for starting something new.

What proof do I need to keep?

Receipts for what you bought, bank statements, and the invoices you sent. HMRC accepts copies of supporting documents as well as originals, so a clear photograph of a receipt is a copy. What it cannot be is a photograph you meant to take.

The shoebox fails in a predictable way. The receipt is easiest to deal with the moment you are handed it: you know what it was for, which job it belongs to, and whether the client is paying for it. By January you have a pile of thermal paper, half of it fading, and a bank statement that says the builders' merchant took money on a Tuesday.

A receipt says what you paid. Only you can say what it was for, and you remember that for about a day.

How Invoice Koi keeps it

You photograph the receipt when you pay, and the photograph stays with the expense it belongs to. Every expense gets a category from 25 built-in ones, ordered the way a trade's receipts arrive (materials, fuel, tools and hire, subcontractors) rather than alphabetically, and you can add your own. An expense with no category is counted as uncategorised and shown to you, rather than being quietly filed under Other.

If the materials were for a client's job, the expense can go straight onto their invoice as a line, and the record remembers which invoice it went on. At the end of the year the expenses export as a spreadsheet or a CSV, with the date, merchant, category, total, tax and net on every row, and the portable backup file carries the photographs with it.

Expenses come with the same subscription as the invoices themselves. The sole trader invoice guide covers the other half of the books: what goes on the invoices you send.

Is Invoice Koi Making Tax Digital software?

No. Invoice Koi sends nothing to HMRC. It is where the record starts, not where the return is made.

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax means keeping your records digitally and sending HMRC a summary every quarter through software it recognises. According to HMRC’s eligibility guidance, it applies to sole traders and landlords from 6 April 2026 if their qualifying income was over £50,000 in 2024 to 2025, from 6 April 2027 if it was over £30,000 in 2025 to 2026, and from 6 April 2028 if it was over £20,000 in 2026 to 2027.

Two parts of its digital records guidance matter here. Each record needs an amount, a date and a category, and you still keep the supporting documents, or copies of them, the same as before. And records moved between programs have to travel by a digital link: HMRC lists CSV importing and exporting as one, and copying and pasting as not.

A CSV export is the kind of file that can make that journey, and that is all that is claimed for it here. Its categories are Invoice Koi's own, not the boxes on HMRC's return, and whether your Making Tax Digital software takes the file is a question for that software and whoever does your books.

Written up by trade: builders, electricians and plumbers, each with the lines that trade actually bills.

Asked every January