If you’re a sole trader, there are a ton of self-employed allowances that you can use to pay less tax.

1. The Trading Allowance

You can claim the first £1,000 of income from self-employment as a flat tax-free allowance.

You won’t be eligible to claim other expenses, though (including the allowances listed below).

Still, for most self-employed people this is more than their expenses.

Plus, no more receipts.

2. The Home Office Allowance

If you work from home, you have two options:

• you can claim the proportion of your home costs (rent, bills) that’s used for business, or
• you can use the flat Home Office Allowance instead:

3. The Mileage Allowance

If you don’t want to keep track of every receipt related to your car (insurance, repairs, fuel, etc.), you can just opt for “simplified expenses” and use this flat rate called the Mileage Allowance instead:

If I claim these self-employed allowances, do I still get the general ones?

Yes.

All of these self-employed allowances are on top of the general allowances:

• the Personal Allowance that all taxpayers have in the UK
• the Marriage Allowance, if you’re married or in a civil partnership
• or all other tax-free allowances if have multiple income sources (maybe you rent out a room or sold a house)

How do I claim them?

You can just claim them through your Self Assessment tax return.