What can a self-employed handyman claim?
Hinges and a tap for Tuesday's job, the combi drill and the ladders, the car you get there in and the cover a letting agent asks to see all come off your profit before tax. A lot of handymen fit the work round an employed job and are paid by householders, so here is how the £1,000 trading allowance compares with claiming costs, how odd-job profit is taxed on top of a salary, and why nearly all of it sits outside CIS.
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What a self-employed handyman can claim
Parts picked up for each job
The replacement tap, a pack of hinges, shelf brackets, a fence panel and its post, a toilet seat, a tube of silicone, a tin of paint for the touch-up, a length of skirting: whatever is bought for a customer's job and left behind at their house. Record it as Goods for resale, the line HMRC labels goods used, and record the whole amount the customer pays you, parts included, as income. If you charge the parts at cost with nothing added, both sides still go through the books. Collecting an item the customer has already bought and paid for themselves is neither.
The drill, the ladders and the rest of the kit
A cordless combi drill and impact driver, a multi-tool, a mitre saw, a laser level, a step ladder and an extension ladder, a sack truck and the workbench count as equipment, which FileThat records under Repairs and maintenance. On the cash basis the price comes off in the tax year you pay it, in one go, however much it was. A second-hand saw bought from another trade counts at what you paid for it, and getting a drill repaired goes in the same box.
Bits, blades, masks and gloves
Drill bits, jigsaw and multi-tool blades, sanding sheets, masking tape, wire wool, rags and dust sheets are used up as you work and belong in Other expenses. Safety boots, work gloves, knee pads, goggles and dust masks protect you, so they are allowable and go in the same box. A polo shirt with your name and number printed on it is allowable as well, because the lettering makes it a uniform rather than everyday clothing.
Insurance and the ways customers find you
Public liability cover is what a letting agent or a landlord wants to see before handing you a key, and a policy for the tools in the van or the boot covers the kit; both are Insurance. Cards through letterboxes, a listing on a local trades directory, a simple website, magnetic signs for the car and a sponsored post for the village page are Advertising costs. Entertaining a customer is not, so the thank-you drink for a regular stays private.
Waste runs, the phone and the paperwork
Taking the old fence panels, a broken wardrobe or a bathroom's worth of rubble to the transfer station is part of the job, so the tip charge goes in Other expenses, and the waste carrier registration you need before carrying it goes in the same category. The share of your mobile that is for work, a quoting or booking app, bookkeeping software and an accountant's fee are all allowable too, each under its own heading rather than lumped together.
The £1,000 trading allowance instead of all this
There is a different route. Instead of recording every cost you can take a flat £1,000 off your takings, called the trading allowance, and pay tax on what is left. The catch is that it is one or the other for the whole year: gov.uk says you cannot deduct any other expenses if you use it, so a van, tools and parts count for nothing in a year you claim it. It suits a handyman whose real costs are under £1,000, and it cannot take profit below zero or create a loss. Over £1,000 of real costs, record them.
The rules behind every claim: allowable expenses for sole traders.
Short drives all day, in a van or your own car
An odd-job round is a morning in one street and an afternoon three villages away, so the mileage mounts up in short hops. You claim a vehicle one of two ways and stay with it while you have that vehicle: HMRC's flat mileage rates, 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year and 25p after that, or the business proportion of what the vehicle costs to keep on the road, fuel, cover, servicing, tyres, repairs, entered as Motor and fuel. Many handymen use the family car, and the flat rate per business mile works for a car exactly as for a van. A van bought outright can instead be deducted on the cash basis in the year it is paid for, less whatever share is private, and after that the claim for that van is its actual running costs alone, with the flat rate off the table; a car cannot be written off that way.
With the trade run from home, as odd-job work nearly always is, the drive from your door to each customer is a business journey, and so is the detour to the DIY store for the parts. The journeys that do not count are the private ones in the same car, and the rare case where a single place turns into a fixed base: a year spent going every day to maintain one holiday park, say, is a place that can be treated as where the business is carried on, which makes the daily drive ordinary commuting.
Keep a note of each trip, the date, who it was for and the miles; a mileage entry in FileThat takes those and prices it at the flat rates. If you claim actual costs instead, enter the fuel and the other running costs with a business-use percentage and the business share goes on the return.
Van or car, which journeys count and the two methods side by side: can I claim mileage.
CIS and VAT
Householders and small landlords pay you in full
Nearly all handyman work is outside the Construction Industry Scheme because of who is paying, not what the job is. Someone having work done on the home they live in is not, and cannot be, a contractor for CIS purposes. A landlord with a few rental houses is a property investment business, not a construction business, and a business outside construction only becomes a contractor once it has put more than £3 million into construction in any 12 months. So a dripping tap for a homeowner, a new fence for a landlord or a few shelves for a shop are paid with nothing deducted, and the tax on them is settled through your return.
Jobs that come through a letting agent
HMRC's manual says an agent acting for a landlord in letting contracts will not generally be a contractor under the scheme; the agent arranges and may pay for the work, but the contract sits between the landlord and you. The position changes if the agent takes on the maintenance of the property and contracts with you in its own name: gov.uk says an agent responsible for arranging contracts with subcontractors must register as a contractor. Ask the agent which they are before the first job. Unless they tell you they are deducting under CIS, record the payment as ordinary income paid in full.
When a builder or maintenance firm brings you in
Repairing, altering or decorating a building is a construction operation, so the moment the payer is a contractor, a builder subcontracting the snagging on a refurbishment or a property maintenance company that holds a block contract, they take 20% off your labour, or 30% if you are not registered, and never off materials. The gross figure before the deduction is your income, and the figures on each monthly statement they hand you go into FileThat so the tax they have already paid over is set against your bill. If that kind of work is going to be regular, register as a subcontractor; the drop from 30% to 20% is cash in your pocket during the year.
A tap swap on its own, and a word on VAT
Even for a contractor, the CIS manual treats repairs to a building's service systems, a tap, a radiator valve, a socket front, as outside the scheme when that is the whole contract. They are caught when they form part of a mixed contract of works that also makes good to the building, and replacing an entire system counts as installation, which is always in. VAT is a long way off for most handymen: registration is needed only once taxable turnover over any 12 months goes past £90,000, counting parts you charge on. If you ever are registered and working under CIS for a VAT-registered contractor, the domestic reverse charge normally applies, and that sale goes under Construction industry - reverse charge sales.
See what you could get back: the CIS refund calculator.
Three days employed, two days on the tools: a worked year
Take a handyman in England who works three days a week for an employer on £22,000 a year through 2026-27, with Income Tax of £1,886 taken under PAYE because their Personal Allowance is set against the wages in their tax code. The other two days they do odd jobs: repairs and small fit-outs for householders, two landlords and a letting agent that pays them from the landlord's rent. Over the year £20,400 is received, some by bank transfer and some in cash, and all of it is income. No one who paid them was a CIS contractor, so nothing was deducted from any of it.
Their costs for the year: £3,600 of parts bought for jobs and charged on (Goods for resale); £820 on a combi drill and impact driver, a mitre saw and an extension ladder (Repairs and maintenance); £380 of blades, bits, masks and gloves (Other expenses); £210 of public liability cover (Insurance); £180 on cards and a directory listing (Advertising costs); 3,200 miles in their own car at 55p, £1,760; £144 as the work portion of the phone bill; and £150 of bookkeeping software. That comes to £7,244, so the profit is £13,156. Real costs of seven times the trading allowance make the choice easy: claim them.
The profit does not get a Personal Allowance of its own; the wages used it. It stacks on top of the £22,000, so the combined income of £35,156 has taxable income of £22,586 and Income Tax of £4,517.20, of which PAYE has already paid £1,886. The extra Income Tax is £2,631.20, which is 20% of the whole profit. Class 4 National Insurance looks only at the trading profit, not the wages: £13,156 is £586 over the £12,570 lower limit, and 6% of that is £35.16. The bill due by 31 January 2028 is £2,666.36. The year's total tax was £4,552.36 and PAYE covered £1,886 of it, about 41%, so with less than 80% paid at source and a bill over £1,000, two payments on account of £1,333.18 towards 2027-28 are also due, on 31 January 2028 and 31 July 2028.
Had they taken the £1,000 trading allowance instead of recording the costs, the profit would have been £19,400, with £3,880 of Income Tax and £409.80 of Class 4: £4,289.80, or £1,623.44 more. Now shrink the sideline. Someone in a full-time job on £28,000 who receives £4,200 for odd jobs with £900 of costs does better with the allowance: profit £3,200, tax £640, no Class 4 because the profit is under £12,570. That bill is under £1,000, and PAYE covered about 83% of the year's tax, so on either test there are no payments on account. Scottish Income Tax rates and bands differ, so a Scottish taxpayer's figures come out a little differently.
What you cannot claim
Cargo trousers and a fleece
Steel-toe boots, knee pads and gloves are protective and count. The cargo trousers, fleece and trainers you wear under or with them are ordinary clothes and do not, no matter how much filler ends up on them. Washing the ordinary clothes is private too.
The supermarket lunch on an ordinary day
A sandwich and a drink picked up between a morning in one house and an afternoon in the next is what you would have eaten on any working day, so it is not a cost of the business. Food becomes a business cost only when a job takes you away from your normal routine, an overnight stay being the clear case.
Shelves in your own hallway
Brackets and timber for your own house, a weekend doing your parents' garden gate, or a lock fitted for a neighbour as a favour are private spending whatever account paid for them. Put the receipt through the records marked disallowable so the profit stays right.
Penalty notices, drawings and the tax bill
A parking penalty outside a customer's flat, a speeding fine, the interest HMRC adds to a late payment and what you take out of the business to live on are never deductible, and neither is the Income Tax or Class 4 charged on the profit.
Each rule in full: what counts as protective clothing, meals and drinks while working and driving, parking and penalty notices.
Straight answers
Should I claim the £1,000 trading allowance or my actual expenses?
Whichever is bigger, because you cannot have both in the same year. Gov.uk says you cannot deduct any other expenses or allowances if you claim the trading allowance, so it is a straight comparison: add up what you really spent on parts, tools, insurance, mileage and the rest, and if it is more than £1,000, claim the real costs. A handyman with a van and a tool collection is usually well over £1,000. The allowance tends to win only for a very small sideline, and it can never turn a profit into a loss. Keep the records either way; you still need to show the income.
Do I pay tax on jobs I was paid for in cash?
Yes. How a customer pays makes no difference to what is taxable: notes handed over at the door are income on the day you receive them, exactly like a bank transfer, and under the cash basis they belong to the tax year they were received in. Record each cash job with the date, the customer and the amount, and bank it or note it the same day so the records match what came in. The same applies to a customer paying in goods or in kind, which is income at its value.
I have a full-time job as well. How is my handyman income taxed?
Your profit is added to your salary and taxed at whatever rate that total reaches. Your Personal Allowance is already used against the wages through your tax code, so the first pound of profit is taxed, at 20% while the combined total stays under £50,270 and at 40% above it. Someone on £45,000 making the £13,156 profit in the worked example pays £4,208.40 of Income Tax on it rather than £2,631.20, because £7,886 of it lands in the higher-rate band. Class 4 National Insurance is worked out on the profit alone, so it only starts once the profit itself passes £12,570. If the bill is under £3,000 and your online return is in by 30 December, HMRC can collect it through next year's tax code instead of a lump sum.
Do I need to register for CIS to do jobs for a letting agent?
Usually not, but ask. HMRC's manual says an agent acting for a landlord in letting contracts will not generally be a contractor under the scheme, and the landlord behind them is a property investment business that is only a contractor once it has put over £3 million into construction work in any 12 months. Where an agent takes on the maintenance of the property and arranges contracts with subcontractors in its own name, gov.uk says it must register as a contractor and would then deduct from your labour. If an agent tells you it will deduct CIS, registering as a subcontractor gets you 20% rather than 30%; if it pays you in full, there is nothing to register for.
When do I have to register for Self Assessment as a handyman?
Once your odd-job income in a tax year is more than £1,000 before any expenses come off, even if you are also employed and already pay tax through PAYE. You must tell HMRC by 5 October after the end of the tax year you first went over, so income earned in 2026-27 means registering by 5 October 2027 and filing by 31 January 2028. Under £1,000 for the whole year you generally do not need to tell HMRC, though you must still keep records of what came in, and you would need to register if you wanted to claim a loss.
A customer wants a gas hob connected and a socket moved while I am there. Can I do those?
Not the gas, unless you are registered: the Health and Safety Executive says anyone employed to work on gas appliances in domestic premises must be a Gas Safe registered engineer. Some electrical work needs building regulations sign-off too, such as replacing a fuse box or electrics near a bath or shower, which is why electricians belong to a competent person scheme. Pass those jobs to a registered trade. Have the customer book and pay them directly: if you hire them and pay them yourself you are paying a subcontractor for construction work, which makes you a CIS contractor with registration, deductions and monthly returns to deal with.
Do self-employed handymen have to use Making Tax Digital?
If your qualifying income is over the threshold, yes. It has been £50,000 since 6 April 2026, and falls to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. Qualifying income means the takings of the self-employment plus any rents you receive, before costs, as shown on an earlier year's return; the wages from an employed job are not part of it. A handyman whose odd jobs bring in £20,400 is under the £50,000 and £30,000 lines on that income alone but over the £20,000 one from April 2028, and someone who also lets a flat adds the rent to the total, and the parts charged on to customers count because they are turnover.
Keep every claim, file it with HMRC
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