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Accountancy, legal and other professional fees can count as allowable business expenses.

You can claim for costs such as:

• hiring of accountants, solicitors, surveyors and architects only for business reasons
• professional indemnity insurance premiums

You cannot claim for:

• legal costs of buying property and machinery - if you use traditional accounting, claim for these costs as capital allowances
• fines for breaking the law
• the cost of preparing and submitting your Self Assessment tax return

If you鈥檙e not sure whether a business cost is an allowable expense contact HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Bank, credit card and other financial charges

You can claim for business costs such as:

• bank, overdraft and credit card charges
• interest on bank and business loans
• hire purchase interest
• leasing payments
• alternative finance payments, for example Islamic finance

You cannot claim for repayments of loans, overdrafts or finance arrangements.

If you鈥檙e not sure whether a business cost is an allowable expense contact HMRC.

Insurance policies

You can claim for any insurance policy for your business, for example public liability insurance.

When your customer does not pay you

If you鈥檙e using traditional accounting, you can claim for amounts of money you include in your turnover but will not ever receive (鈥榖ad debts鈥�). However, you can only write off these debts if you鈥檙e sure they will not be recovered from your customer in the future.

You cannot claim for:

• debts not included in turnover
• debts related to the disposal of fixed assets, for example land, buildings, machinery
• bad debts that are not properly calculated, for example you can not just estimate that your debts are equal to 5% of your turnover

Bad debts cannot be claimed if you use cash basis accounting because you鈥檝e not received the money from your debtors. With cash basis, you only record income on your return that you鈥檝e actually received.