Home Office

Home Office and household bills question

I am an IT contractor with a limited company. I am the only employee and have a room in my house as an office, though i usually work in clients offices i sometimes work at home and do all my research etc in my office at home.

Can i use my company to pay a percentage of my household bills such as electricity and heating etc? An if so what percentage?

Thanks for the input.

Essentially you can use the company to pay anything you like but be careful. If you use a part of your home as an office space you may be liable to Capital Gains Tax on a portion of the sale price/profit if you ever choose to sell it.

Like most things however if you keep the amounts small and sensible the Tax Inspector will not generally make an issue of it.

The reply from tax advisor seems dubious to me. You can certainly use the company bank account to pay for anything you like, but if it's not an expense related to the company it will be considered drawings when compiling your accounts.
Also, as I understand it simply using your home to work from won't mean you are liable to CGT when you sell. If, on the other hand, you converted your attic for use as an office or added an outside office and claimed it back as a business expense, you would be liable for CGT. Open to correction though.....

Minion,

The advice I got from my accountant, and have seen it repeated here on AAM but can't find it at the moment, was that up to 30% of household bills can be offset as ligit company costs ie 30% of ESB, Gas, Phone etc

efm

Thanks guys,
30% seems to be what i'm hearing too.
I'll be working more and more from home in the future and with the cost of energy etc going up i think i'll start recovering some expenses

Unless you use a part of your home EXCLUSIVELY for business purposes you don't have a CGT problem. Go in an read a book at the weekend and you're fine.