You can include many expenses in your tax return - alongside your business income - to reduce the amount of profit you pay tax on.

The general rule is that the expenses must be wholly and exclusively for this business.

HMRC’s guidance on this is pretty good. Here’s a checklist of expenses to help make sure you don’t forget anything (full details available on this page):

• office costs, for example, stationery or phone bills

• travel costs, for example, fuel, parking, train or bus fares

• clothing expenses, for example, uniforms

• staff costs, for example, salaries or subcontractor costs

• things you buy to sell on, for example, stock or raw materials

• financial costs, for example, insurance or bank charges

• costs of your business premises, for example, heating, lighting, business rates

• advertising or marketing, for example, website costs

• training courses related to your business, for example, refresher courses

Pro tip: most people can also claim the cost of using APARI and any accountant fees!

SELF-EMPLOYED EXPENSES

APARI’s record-keeping tools help you stay on top of your property expenses so you always know your profit. These record-keeping categories are automatically added to the APARI tax return to take the hassle out of preparing your final submission.

Our tax return product is fully HMRC-recognised.

If you’re familiar with HMRC’s SA103 page of the tax return, the table below shows how the HMRC tax return boxes map to the APARI tax return.

APARI Software Ltd is an accounting software provider and does not supply specific tax advice. For more information, please see our full terms and conditions.