What can I claim as expenses when self-employed in the UK?

Anything incurred wholly and exclusively for the work: mileage, tools, materials, platform and payment fees, public liability insurance, DBS checks, trade memberships, and a business share of your phone and home costs. You cannot claim commuting to a single regular workplace, everyday clothing, fines, client entertaining or your own drawings.

How much can I claim per mile when self-employed?

HMRC's simplified mileage rates are 45p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year and 25p a mile after that, for a car or van. Parking and tolls can be claimed on top, but parking fines cannot. You must keep a log of dates, journeys and mileage.

Can I claim my phone bill if I am self-employed?

You can claim the business proportion, not the whole bill, unless the line is used exclusively for work. Work out a percentage you can justify, based on how much of your usage is work, and apply it consistently across the year.

Are platform fees tax deductible?

Yes. Marketplace commission, payment processing charges and any lead or subscription fee paid to find work are deductible business costs. This matters because the figure a platform reports to HMRC is gross, before its fee has come off.

Self-employed expenses for taskers: what you can actually claim (UK)

Most taskers pay more tax than they need to, and it is almost never because they missed something exotic. It is because they did not keep a mileage log.

The test everything has to pass

A cost is deductible if it is incurred wholly and exclusively for the business. Not mostly. Not partly, unless the business part can be separately identified, a phone bill can be apportioned; a suit cannot.

That single rule decides almost every question below.

Mileage: the one that matters most

If you drive to jobs, this is your biggest deduction by a distance. HMRC's simplified mileage rates for a car or van are:

Business miles in the tax year	Rate
First 10,000	45p per mile
Above 10,000	25p per mile

Motorcycles are 24p, and there is a rate for bicycles.

Six thousand business miles is £2,700 of deduction. That is more than most taskers' entire remaining expense list, and it is claimed on the strength of a log you either kept or did not.

What counts as a business mile. Travelling from your base to a customer, between customers, to a supplier or the tip, and back. If you work from home and travel out to a series of different customer sites, home is your business base and those journeys are business travel. What does not count is ordinary commuting to one regular place of work, or the personal leg of a journey you combined with a business one.

Flat rate or actual costs, not both. You can instead claim the actual running costs of the vehicle, fuel, insurance, servicing, capital allowances, apportioned for business use. Once you have used the flat rate for a particular vehicle you must keep using it for that vehicle. The flat rate is simpler and usually better for a car that is also your personal car; actual costs can win for a dedicated van with heavy depreciation.

Parking and tolls are claimable on top of the mileage rate. Parking fines are not.

Tools and equipment

Small tools and consumables, drill bits, blades, cloths, screws, go straight down as expenses.
Larger equipment, a good cordless set, a carpet cleaner, a trailer, is capital. Under the cash basis, which is now the default for sole traders, most equipment other than cars is simply deducted when you pay for it. Under traditional accounting you claim capital allowances, usually the annual investment allowance. Either way, keep the invoice.
Something you already owned and brought into the business can be brought in at its market value on the day you started using it for work. People forget this in their first year.

Materials

Everything you buy for a specific job and pass on to the customer: paint, fixings, replacement parts, cleaning products, waste bags. Keep the receipt attached to the job in your head, because the customer's payment for those materials counts as your income too.

Platform and payment fees

Marketplace commission, payment processing charges, and any subscription or lead fee you pay to find work are all deductible business costs. They come off the gross figure the platform reports to HMRC, see our fees and your earnings statement.

Insurance, checks and registrations

Public liability insurance, deductible, and typically £60, £200 a year for a sole-trader handyman or cleaner.
Tools cover, goods in transit, hire-and-reward motor insurance, deductible where they relate to the work.
Basic DBS check, £21.50, deductible.
Waste carrier registration with the Environment Agency, deductible, and legally required if you take other people's waste away.
Trade body memberships and trade magazines, deductible.

Phone, internet and home working

Phone and broadband are apportioned. Work out a defensible business percentage and apply it consistently: "I use my phone for work about 40% of the time, so I claim 40% of a £30 bill" is a reasonable position you can explain. A round 100% on a personal contract is not.

Working from home. If you do quoting, invoicing and admin at home, you can either apportion actual costs (a share of heat, light and broadband based on rooms and hours) or use HMRC's simplified expenses flat rate, which is a fixed monthly amount set by bands of hours worked at home per month, starting at 25 hours. Look up the current band amounts on gov.uk. It is small money next to mileage, claim it, but do not spend an evening on it.

Training, and the line HMRC draws

Keeping an existing skill up to date is generally allowable. Training that gives you a genuinely new trade is treated as capital and generally is not. A refresher course for a cleaner is one thing; a City & Guilds qualification that turns a cleaner into an electrician is another. The boundary is blurrier than the rule sounds, and HMRC's guidance on it has been revised, check the current position before claiming a big course.

What you cannot claim

Commuting to a single regular workplace.
Everyday clothing, even if you only wear it for work. Protective gear, safety boots and branded uniform are fine.
Fines of any kind, parking, speeding, penalties.
Client entertaining.
Your own wages or drawings. You are not an employee of yourself.
The personal share of anything mixed-use.
Lunch, in the ordinary course. Reasonable subsistence on a genuine business trip outside your normal pattern is a narrower and more defensible claim.

A realistic year

A part-time tasker doing about £12,000 gross with a car:

Line	Amount
Mileage, 6,000 business miles at 45p	£2,700
Materials and consumables	£1,400
Tools this year	£700
Platform and payment fees	£1,100
Public liability insurance	£140
Basic DBS	£22
Phone, 40% of £30 a month	£144
Home working, flat rate	~£150
Total	~£6,350

That is more than six times the £1,000 trading allowance, which is why anyone at this level should be claiming actual costs.

Five minutes a week

The whole system, honestly:

One card for the business. A separate account is better, but one dedicated card is enough. It means your bank statement is nearly your books.
Photograph every receipt into one phone album the moment you get it. Not a shoebox.
Log mileage as you go. Date, from, to, purpose, miles. An app that reads your phone's location is fine; a note in your phone is fine; reconstructing it in January is not.
Download your platform earnings statement monthly.
Move 25-30% of every payment to a savings account the day it arrives.

Keep records for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline they relate to.

Do those five things and your return takes an evening. Skip the third and you will hand HMRC a thousand pounds you did not owe.

This is general information, not tax advice. Rates and rules change, check gov.uk or speak to an accountant about your own circumstances.