Using Home as Office – £6/week Expense – VAT Question

Hi all, I'm a single director of a limited company and work from home full-time, using a dedicated area of my house as my office. Each week, I expense £6 to the company to cover use of home for business purposes — mainly covering business phone calls, electricity, and heating for my workspace. I understand this is the HMRC flat rate allowance for simplified expenses, but I have a couple of questions around VAT: Can the company reclaim VAT on this £6/week expense? As this is a flat rate and not based on actual bills, is a receipt or evidence required to support the VAT element (if reclaimable)? I’m not claiming the actual proportion of household costs, just the standard £6 per week. So I’m unsure whether VAT can be reclaimed at all, or whether it’s treated as outside the scope. Appreciate any advice or links to official guidance. Thanks! James

If you work from home "full-time" and you are a sole Director of the company, then you are not entitled to the £6 per week tax allowance, or to put it another way, only employees are entitled to the £6 per week allowance, are you an employee (as in, the Director has an employment contract and is paid an agreed salary for the role they perform)? I would also double check to see if you can even claim the £6 because you state you work 100% fully from home, the £6 per week allowance applies only where there is occasional use of home office as per this link "You cannot claim tax relief if you choose to work from home. This includes if your employment contract lets you work from home some or all of the time or your employer has an office, but you cannot go there sometimes because it’s full" https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/working-at-home The £6 is not VAT recoverable because it is a payment from the company to you the individual/the employee. The company does not incur incur any input tax because, presumably, the utilities, rent/mortgage and phone costs are not in the name of the company but in the name of the home owner, the company cannot reclaim input tax on costs that are not addressed to or wholly used by the company.

Hi James,
Please see the guidance below:
VIT41600 - Specific issues: domestic accommodation.
Thank you.