Worked from home during the pandemic? Don’t miss out on your 2020/21 tax refund.

Tax refunds

HMRC issue some tax refunds automatically, in other cases, you need to actively claim them. If you are an employee, this includes tax refunds for certain job-related expenses that you pay for yourself  and are not reimbursed by your employer, for example professional subscriptions, mileage allowance or working from home.

You usually have four years from the end of the tax year to submit a tax refund claim for unreimbursed employment expenses. As such, for refunds relating to the 2020/21 tax year, you need to make your claim by 5 April 2025, which you can now do quickly and easily through HMRC’s online system.  

Working from home and coronavirus

When you work from home and your expenses are not reimbursed, in some limited situations you can claim tax relief for costs like heating and electricity. The tax relief available can be based on either:

• A proportion of your actual household running costs, if you keep records of them all and the extent to which you use your home for work. Or
• You can claim £6 a week as a flat rate expense.

You can usually only claim tax relief for unreimbursed expenses of working from home in respect of weeks where you are required to work from home by your employer. That is, you are employed on the basis you work from home or have no choice but to work from home. However, these rules were relaxed for some tax years during the coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus easement

The coronavirus pandemic meant that many businesses instructed their employees to work from home due to UK government restrictions. As an easement, HMRC said that if you worked from home for even just one day of the tax year due to the coronavirus pandemic, you could claim a flat rate deduction of £6 a week for the full tax year (so a deduction of £312 for the tax year). For basic rate taxpayers, this could result in a tax refund of £62.40.

The coronavirus easement was in place for the tax years 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23. However in 2022/23, the lifting of coronavirus restrictions meant fewer people were likely to be eligible to claim for any part of the year as they weren’t ‘required’ to work from home. Therefore, if you were working from home more regularly during 2022/23 but this was your choice, you won’t be able to claim the tax relief from 6 April 2022.

How to make a 2020/21 refund claim

Online form

You can use HMRC’s online system, which means you can make your claim right up to the deadline without having to worry about postal delays. However, we don’t recommend you leave things to the last minute obviously, in case of any problems using the service. You should also try to save a copy of the submitted form and/or keep a note of any receipt HMRC’s system gives you. The online form is available through the government gateway on GOV.UK. You will be asked some eligibility questions before you reach the actual form.

Postal form

You can use HMRC’s paper P87 form to make a claim for your job-related expenses, including working from home. You will have to start this in good time to make sure your form is received by HMRC before the cut-off date of 5 April 2025. If you are posting a paper claim form, you might wish to ask the Post Office for proof of postage and keep this in case HMRC say they haven’t received your form.

New evidence requirements

As set out in our recently updated guidance, for most expense types, HMRC temporarily switched to a paper and post route between 14 October 2024 and late December 2024, to respond to a growing tax risk driven by ineligible claims for job-related expenses.

Also since 14 October 2024, and again to respond to a risk, in most cases, you have to provide evidence to HMRC to support your claim for tax relief on employment expenses.

In late December, HMRC reintroduced the online claim facility for claiming tax relief on expenses, which can be used in most cases. They have made it possible for you to submit your evidence online along with the online form. 

  Note, if you are claiming the £6 weekly flat rate working from home expenses for the 2020/21 or the 2021/22 tax year, you do not need to provide evidence with your claim.

Our page of guidance also sets out all the evidence requirements across the different categories of expenses.