Sally said
I don't currently include any of my household bills, and I know I should I just can't work out how to.
Here's an idea:
if you are uberorganised make a note of you gas and electric bills as they come in. If not, throw them in a box or filing cabinet and forget them for a year (but don't forget WHERE they are).
Have a separate account book or a separate page at the back of your account book.
At a convenient (or panicking) time of the year eg. just before you fill in your tax form pull out the bills.
Look at you 'stuff'. Would it theoretically fit in one room? Say it will. Think am I using one room's worth of my house for business purposes? Count the rooms in your house but not the kitchen, bathroom and toilet. So say you have 3 bedrooms, a living room and a dining room, the number you should be thinkng of is 5.
You are going to divide your bills by 5.
That is how much you can put down as a tax allowance for heat and light.
Going back to your separate book or page. I write down in columns 1. the amount on the gas bill that came through my letter box. 2. what a fifth of that is. I show my maths, then if the tax man decendeth he can see my working outs and check back to the original bill if he so desireth.
I record it on a separate page because it doesn't fit in with my daily in and out goings which I am pretty good at entering as they happen.
The house hold bill thing was doing my head in but this system seems to be working - for me.....
When you've got the hang of that try thinking about your phone landline/ADSL line bill. How much do you use your phone and computer?
The maths should go - how many people are sharing it? Out of your share how much is personal? Divide your phone bill by both numbers.
The answer is how much is tax allowable.
Eg My number is easy - I'm an empty nester. There is only me and my husband at home - so I divide the bill by 2. All my friends are potential customers so I only use the computer for business (which is 99.99% true)so my answer is still 2. To salve my conscience I don't count my mobile phone bills because I although I use it for the odd business call it's predominately used for family stuff.
So I half my BT bill.