Plenty of doctors work from home as a matter of routine, reviewing patient notes, dictating and signing letters, running telephone or video consultations, doing appraisal and revalidation work, or handling practice administration. If you are a GP partner, salaried GP, hospital consultant with private work, or a locum, using part of your home for work can give rise to use-of-home tax relief.

The amount you can claim, and the way you claim it, depends on whether the work is self-employed or employed. This guide explains the apportionment basis HMRC expects, which costs qualify, the flat-rate shortcuts, and the traps to avoid for the 2026/27 tax year. It is general information, not advice for your own circumstances.

Self-employed or employed? It changes everything

The single most important question is how the income that the home working relates to is taxed, because two different sets of rules apply.

  • Self-employed work (a GP partner's profit share, or a sole-trader locum, or a doctor's private and medico-legal work run personally): you deduct a fair and reasonable proportion of your home running costs as a business expense, or use the HMRC simplified flat rate.
  • Employed work (a salaried GP, or a consultant in their NHS post): you can only claim where you are required to work from home, not where you simply choose to, and the relief is the £6 per week flat rate (2026/27) or actual additional costs if higher.

If you wear more than one hat (for example a salaried GP who also does sole-trader locum sessions, or a consultant with private practice), you treat each stream under its own rules. For how locum income is reported and what else a locum can deduct, see our guide to locum doctor expenses and what you can claim.

The apportionment basis for self-employed doctors

For self-employed work, HMRC does not give a single percentage. You apportion your actual household costs on a basis that is fair, reasonable and consistently applied, reflecting both the part of the home used for the business and the proportion of time it is used for work. The two common bases are by room (the share of rooms used for work) and by floor area, usually then adjusted for the share of time the space is used for the business rather than privately.

Running costs you can apportion

  • Gas and electricity
  • Council tax
  • Water rates (where metered or genuinely affected)
  • Home insurance (the buildings and relevant contents element)
  • Mortgage interest (the interest only, never capital repayments)
  • Rent, if you are a tenant
  • Reasonable repairs and cleaning attributable to the work space

Direct work costs you can claim in full

  • Office furniture and equipment bought for the work (often via capital allowances and the Annual Investment Allowance)
  • Computer hardware and work software
  • Medical reference books and journals used for current practice
  • Stationery, printing and consumables
  • The business proportion of your phone and broadband (claimed separately, on actual business use)

What you cannot claim: capital improvements to the property (a new kitchen, an extension, a replacement boiler that serves the whole house), and anything with no work connection. A cost that benefits the whole home, like the boiler, is not a home-office expense even if your office is one of the rooms it heats.

How to calculate your relief: a worked example

The figures below are illustrative only, to show the method, not a typical or expected claim.

Suppose a self-employed GP uses one room of a six-room house as a study for practice administration and telephone consultations, and uses that room for the business for roughly half of its waking use (the rest being personal). Annual household running costs are heat and light £1,800, council tax £2,400, home insurance £400 and mortgage interest £8,000, a total of £12,600.

  • Room share: one of six rooms is about 17%.
  • Time adjustment: the room is used for the business for about half its use, so roughly 8% to 9% of total costs is a defensible business proportion.
  • On £12,600 of running costs that is in the region of £1,000 to £1,100 of deductible expense for the year.

How much tax that saves depends on your marginal rate. For a higher-rate taxpayer in England, Wales or Northern Ireland (40% in 2026/27), a £1,000 deduction is worth about £400. Scotland has its own income tax bands and rates, so a Scottish taxpayer's saving differs. The point of the example is the method: apportion honestly, document the basis, and apply the same approach each year.

The flat-rate shortcuts

Self-employed: HMRC simplified expenses (2026/27)

Instead of apportioning, a self-employed doctor working 25 or more hours a month from home can use HMRC's simplified flat rate, with no need to split bills:

  • 25 to 50 hours a month: £10 per month
  • 51 to 100 hours a month: £18 per month
  • 101 or more hours a month: £26 per month

So a doctor consistently working 101 or more hours a month from home can claim £312 for the year (£26 × 12). The flat rate does not cover phone and internet, which you still claim separately on actual business use. For many doctors with a genuine home office and real household bills, the actual-cost apportionment above produces a larger deduction, so it is worth comparing the two.

Employees: the £6 per week flat rate (2026/27)

Where an employed doctor is genuinely required to work from home, HMRC allows a flat £6 per week without keeping evidence of the extra cost, or the actual additional household costs if you can show they are higher. This is the route for a salaried GP or a consultant in their NHS role, claimed through Self Assessment or a P87. Crucially, HMRC tightened this from 2022: you cannot claim simply because you prefer to work from home or split your time, only where the duties require it and there is no appropriate workplace alternative.

Who claims, and where

GP partners (self-employed). A use-of-home deduction is normally taken in the partnership accounts (so it reduces each partner's profit share), or as an allowable expense on the partnership pages of the personal return where the cost is borne personally. Partners are taxed on profit share, not drawings, so the deduction flows through the partnership computation.

Sole-trader locums (self-employed). Claim on the self-employment pages of your Self Assessment, using either apportionment or the simplified flat rate. See locum doctor expenses for the wider list.

Salaried GPs and employed consultants. Claim as employment expenses, but only where you are required to work from home and the practice or trust does not reimburse you. The £6 per week flat rate is the usual basis.

Locums working through a personal service company inside IR35. Where an engagement is caught by the off-payroll rules, the income is taxed broadly as employment income by the fee-payer, which removes the scope for a separate home-office deduction against that income. This is one of several reasons the inside-IR35 position matters. See locum doctor IR35. Note that the off-payroll rules remain in force; they were not abolished.

The capital gains tax point on exclusive business use

If a room is used wholly and exclusively for business, that part of the property can lose private residence relief, so a slice of any future gain on selling your home could be chargeable to capital gains tax (the annual exempt amount is £3,000 for 2026/27). In practice most doctors keep some private use of the study, which both keeps it out of the exclusive-use trap and means you apportion the running costs for the time it is used for work. If you are considering designating a space as exclusively business, take advice first, because the CGT exposure can outweigh the income tax saving.

Record keeping

Whichever basis you use, keep enough to support the claim if HMRC asks:

  • Utility bills and council tax statements
  • Mortgage interest statements or your tenancy agreement and rent records
  • Home insurance documents
  • Receipts for equipment and furniture
  • A simple floor plan or room count showing the work space
  • A note of the hours or working pattern at home (especially if using the hours-based flat rate)

Keep these for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline for the tax year, and longer if an enquiry is open.

Common mistakes to avoid

Treating a shared room as fully claimable. If the family also uses the room, only the business proportion is allowable, time-adjusted, not the whole thing.

Confusing the two flat rates. The £6 per week is an employee rate; the £10 / £18 / £26 monthly bands are the self-employed simplified scheme. They are not interchangeable.

Claiming capital items as running costs. Improvements and whole-house replacements are not use-of-home expenses.

Double claiming where reimbursed. If the practice or trust already covers the cost, you cannot also claim tax relief on it.

Overlooking the CGT side. Designating exclusive business use to maximise the deduction can create a chargeable gain on your home later.

Where this fits in your wider tax position

Use-of-home relief is usually a small line in a much bigger picture. For doctors, the larger levers are the NHS pension and annual allowance, the partner-versus-salaried decision, and whether any private work is worth incorporating. See our guides to GP pension contributions and tax relief and the complete list of GP tax deductions to see where the home office sits alongside everything else.

If you are unsure which basis gives the best result, or how home-office relief interacts with your NHS pension, private work or partnership accounts, our specialist medical accountants can review your position. Get in touch for a tailored conversation about your circumstances.