Sole Trader expenses question: use of home as office

[Bikerjon]

Wonder if anyone could give me a little help with calculating sole trader expenses? I'm trying to work out how to apportion part-time use of the house as an office. I know I can claim a portion of the heat/light/mortgage interest costs but there seems to be various ways of calculating this . Basically I use 1 bedroom as an office for 2-3 days a week. What's the simplest way of claiming this?

Also looking for simplest way to calculate mobile and fixed line/broadband expenses. All are used for both work and play so I guess these need to be apportioned too.

Thanks in advance

[Bikerjon]

Eric Mc said:

Add together all your domestic costs (light, heat, Council Tax, water charges, morgtage intetrest).

Calculate how many liveable rooms there are in the house (include living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. Ignore hallways, loos, bathrooms, garages utility rooms, outhouses and sheds).
For most people that usually workd out at 4 to 6.
If (say) 6, divide the domestic costs by 1/6. You can claim this figure as your "Use of Home as Office".

Thanks Eric. So if I add up all the bills for the past year and divide by number of rooms could I then simply divide this figure again by 12 and enter it in Quickbooks as a monthly expense? Or does it just get used at the time of completing a self assessment?

[Bikerjon]

Well I've totted up the annual bills for mortgage interest, water, gas+ elec, council tax and it comes to just over £9000 (and that's with our current low interest rates!) I can easily see how renters could go way beyond this!

So with 7 rooms that's just under £1300 to claim.

My broadband/landline is a package deal so I think a 50% claim would seem realistic (about £15 a month) Same again with mobile phone.

Sound reasonable?