Expenses a Locum Doctor Can Claim

Everything starts here. Section 34 of the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005 disallows any deduction for expenses not incurred wholly and exclusively for the trade. The purpose has to be the trade and nothing else.

There is one relieving provision worth knowing. Where a cost has an identifiable part that is genuinely and solely for the trade, that part can be deducted even though the whole cannot. That is what makes an apportionment defensible, provided it is a real apportionment and not a round number picked because it looked reasonable.

General Medical Council fees are deductible for a self-employed doctor, and HMRC says so directly, on the basis that revalidation keeps a doctor's skills and knowledge current. It is the fee for entry or retention on the register that is being allowed.

The British Medical Association appears on HMRC's approved list with relief restricted to 85% of the annual subscription rather than all of it. That restriction is easy to miss and it is the kind of detail an inspector notices. The same fee also cannot be deducted twice, so a subscription already relieved against employment income cannot be claimed again against the trade.

HMRC revised its position on training, and the current test is broader than the one most people remember. Training is deductible where it either updates existing expertise or provides new expertise within the individual's existing business area, and is unlikely to be deductible where it is unrelated to that area. The full wording is at BIM35660 in HMRC's Business Income Manual.

For a locum that usually means CPD and courses inside your specialty are fine, and training aimed at moving into a different line of work is not. The line is the existing business area, not whether the skill is new.

Travel from home to a place of business is normally not deductible. The exception that matters here is the itinerant trader: someone with no fixed base, travelling between the varying places where the trade is carried on, can deduct that travel. A locum working across several trusts and practices often fits that description, and a locum with one long regular placement often does not.

This is the area where confident answers should be treated with suspicion. The leading authority on doctors specifically is a tribunal decision rather than anything in HMRC's own manuals, so the position is genuinely arguable and turns on the pattern of your work. Keep a mileage record either way, because a claim you cannot evidence is not worth arguing about.

Where you work at home at least 25 hours a month, flat rates avoid apportioning household bills: £10 a month for 25 to 50 hours, £18 for 51 to 100, and £26 for 101 or more. Telephone and internet sit outside the flat rate and are claimed separately.

For most locums the flat rate is smaller than a properly worked apportionment, and it is also the version nobody has to defend. Which one is right depends on how much admin genuinely happens at home.

Ordinary clothing worn while working is not deductible, even where you would not have bought it otherwise. That has been settled since Mallalieu v Drummond in 1983, on the basis that clothing always serves a purpose beyond the trade.

Uniforms and protective clothing are deductible, and HMRC's manual gives a nurse's uniform as its example. Scrubs and protective equipment sit on the right side of that line. Suits do not. If several years of this need sorting out, that is what our locum accounts work is for, and note that a locum above the threshold is now also inside Making Tax Digital.