Can I claim my lunch if I am self employed?

Lunch on the job

The test HMRC uses is whether the cost is wholly and exclusively for the business. Eating is something you do whether you work or not, so a normal lunch fails it, even if you only ever eat it on site.

The exception is travel that takes you outside your normal pattern: a job far enough away that you stay overnight, or an itinerant trade where there is no regular workplace. Reasonable meal costs on those trips are allowable.

The clothes you stand up in

Everyday clothing is out, even if you only wear it for work. Jeans and a plain hoodie are jeans and a plain hoodie. Protective clothing and a uniform are in: steel toecaps, hi vis, gloves, a branded polo that could not be worn as ordinary clothes.

The drive to work

Driving to the same place every day is commuting, and commuting is not a business journey. Working at different sites, week to week, from a base at home, is different: that travel is yours to claim. A bricklayer named Horton won exactly that argument in 1971 and the case still stands.

The whole phone bill

Only the business share. HMRC’s own worked example is a bill of two hundred pounds a year, one hundred and thirty of it personal and seventy business, and the seventy is what goes in. The home working flat rate does not cover phone or broadband either, so those are claimed on top, at the business share.

Fines

Parking, speeding, a penalty for a late return. Not one of them comes off, and it makes no difference that you picked it up on a job.