Can HMRC REALLY Refund Your GMC and BMA Fees? New Step-By-Step Guide for 2025!

The game has changed. HMRC has changed the rules around claiming back taxes for your professional expenses. Thousands of doctors like you have used the guide on moneywisedoctor.com taxreliefguide to claim back several thousands of pounds in tax relief for things like gmc, mdu, bma, Royal College expenses and previously you could just walk through the guide we made online. Before we get into it in details.

Let'S look at what you can claim you these are sort of like the commonest ones.

Everyone can actually claim and do all of it online and get your tax relief. But now HMRC has made some changes. If you're a doctor or healthcare professional and you haven't been claiming tax relief on your professional expenses, you're probably missing out on a few thousands, if not several thousands of pounds. But here's the thing. Hmrc, the UK tax bosses have changed the game recently. They've brought in new rules for claiming tax relief. But don't worry. In this video I'll guide you step by step through the updated process so you can claim what is rightfully yours. Now to start with, if you're one of the thousands of doctors or healthcare professionals who have downloaded our guide, our free tax Guide in the past, or used or watched any of our previous videos, you put probably already know the process that we used to use until recently to claim your tax relief. It was once a simple and stress free, no paper receipts required. You could do it online, but many of you have told me how you successfully claimed your taxes. I even know a couple of people, maybe two or three, who claim up to £10,000 worth of expense relief because they've not claimed for a few years. But things have changed now. HMRC have recently updated the system and the process now requires a bit more effort. But don't worry, I've verified all the details directly from the HMRC website.

I've even gone ahead to enroll with.

A seminar and also ringing them to have a bit of a chat so you don't have to. If you're new here, welcome. I'm Dr. Andrea Grim, I'm an ex salary GP and I'm an investor and the founder of Money Wise Doctor. I started this platform to help doctors and healthcare professionals make smarter financial decisions and avoid costly mistakes. Alright, if you're interested and you're in for the ride, hit the subscribe button and just come along to make sure you don't miss out anything. Alright, let's dive right into it. Now you might be wondering why bother spending an hour or maybe 30 minutes to claim tax relief. Well, let me break it down for you why this is really important. If you claim your tax relief, there's a few things it can help you with. One, it can significantly reduce your tax bill. Two, it can increase your take home pay. And three, it can help you avoid.

Giving money to the government unnecessarily.

You don't want to overpay your tax, you want to pay what you're due. With the rising cost of living, stagnation of wages, inflation and everything going on, especially if you're a higher tax rate payer. If you're falling into the 60% tax trap, you want to do everything you can to lower your tax bill so that you're not overpaying. Whatever you can do to calm down a band that will work. I first learned about tax relief myself from my accountant years ago. I went to the HMRC website just to double check it. After they mentioned it, I double checked the process and guess what? It was all perfectly legal. So the first year I claimed about 2,500 pounds myself. But when I added multiple years that I've not claimed in the past, it jumped to about £7,000. And that's money that I would have missed out on if I hadn't taken the time to understand the process. And here's the kicker. You can claim up to four previous taxes, so you can claim the current taxi and you can also claim the four previous taxes. So don't delay, don't let procrastination cost you thousands. Now let's get into what you can claim before we get into claiming. One is your professional membership fees. So if you think about General Medical Council, BMA, MD, Royal Colleges, GMC, sorry we mentioned that, NMC, these are the main things. But you can also claim things like mileage, you know, your exams. If you've written things like paces akt, you could also claim things like your medical equipment, for instance, your stethoscope, if you need to replace it, you can also claim that. So these are a few things I can claim. There's a full list of what you can claim and what you cannot claim in the downloadable manual. You can get the link in the description to download it to make sure that you don't sort of like claim the wrong thing. Because now it's a paper process rather than online, so you don't get that quick feedback. You don't want to send off paper receipts and then you come back and.

Hear a different thing.

Now, as of October 2024, the process has changed. That was the New change. You now need to complete the P87 form. So that's a form to claim. Now print it, attach your receipts and post it to hmrc. I know, I know, I know it's a bit more work than before, but don't let that discourage you. You're entitled to this money, so let's go get it. Now, if you check the link in the description, you're going to download the a step by step guide that can help you through the process. But also I'm going to demonstrate to you in this video how to fill out the P87 form. It's the same form that you are doing online. If you're not too sure, you can check my previous videos on the same issue, but now you do it on paper. And I'm going to show you right.

Here in this video, all right, I'm.

Just going to show you step by.

Step how to claim tax relief on your professional expenses. Like I previously discussed, the old guide, which we made, which was very good for doing it online in an easy way, has been changed basically because HMRC introduced some new changes in October 2024. But don't worry, it's still quite simple. It's just that it has the extra inconvenience of being on paper. You have to download and print the P87 form for claiming your taxes. Previously you could do all that online, but now you need to download the form and send you the receipt or, well, the receipts of everything you're claiming, as well as a mileage log if you are claiming for mile. I think the best place to start is that I'm going to share my screen. The form itself is the P. It's not a difficult one. The P87 form. Let me share my screen now so you can see what I'm doing. All right, so that's the form. The P87 form says tax relief for expenses, unemployment. You can easily find this form with the link in the description because we've included obviously the link to download the updated guide. So if you download, if you sign up with the link there, then you receive the updated guide in your email. So this is the form. If you're wondering how to get it, there are many ways to get it. Again, inside the guide, which we've shared, you can get a link that will take you straight to this form and you can download it alternatively, if you just go to Google and type in claim tax relief for your job expense. If you do that, it's going to bring you up to HMRC website. So let's click that. So if you scroll down, you can see claim tax relief for your job expenses. You can see overview working from home uniforms, vehicles. So this is professional fees. Remember the maintenance you're trying to claim your things like your gmc, your bma, BDA or whatever are the main professional expenses you've made. Remember, there's also fees for things like Royal College if you're in GP training or a GP roc. GP is an important one. Obviously for other colleges you have your own expenses too that you can claim. These are the basic ones.

Obviously the guide has a list of.

Things I can claim and things that are not allowable. So you can use the link in the description to download it. Okay, so looking at this at the moment, if you choose professional fees and subscription, which we have, it takes you down, it gives you a bit of information. Again, if you use our previous guide, you know you've already seen this. This is nothing. It says you can claim professional membership fees if you pay the fees to be able to do your job. So you can't pay for your golf club membership, you can't claim it back. But if you have to pay gmc, obviously BMA or BDA and an nmc, then it's really important. Okay, so you can claim it. Basically that's why it says you cannot claim tax relief on life membership subscription. Yeah, we know this. I'm just going to scroll along. Then it says how to claim. Previously, if you click this Start now, it get took you to the online form or it asked you some questions and then took it to the online form. But this is important is mentioned here that if you complete a self assessment tax returns, you must claim through tax return instead. So this process is not ideal for somebody that does self assessment. And again, if you go to moneywisedoctor.com you'll see an article I've written about self assessment. Who needs to do self assessment? If you earn above 100k or you have other sources of IT income, you know there are quite a few criteria. So if you do self assessment. No, don't do this form. Stop now and go and do your self assessment with self assessment tax returns. Of course, if you need a specialist medical accountant, if you need an expert in that area, you can find one through moneywise doctor.com you can find a specialist accountant that can help you through the process. Well, let's crack on.

I'll click Start now.

So when you go to Start now again, just like before, it will ask you all the criteria like select all the expenses you want to claim. Let's focus on professional expenses. But the other things you can claim, obviously there's working from home, if you work from home, use a business phone and there are things you want to claim, fine, but I'm assuming that you're a doctor, probably you're working in the hospital and a GP surgery. So I'm just going to jump straight to professional expenses. As you can see the other expenses here as well. Now the professional expenses again here they've actually said who are the approved organizations. Obviously things like gmc, bma, you can always right click and open to that window to check if the organization is approved. But basically the common ones, the ones that were in the previous guide, they are still the same ones are approved, basically. So I'll click on continue here. Now the next question. Who are you claiming expenses for? I'll say myself then continue. Are you claiming for expenses after 5th of April 2020? There's a reason for this question. Because you can claim four years back plus the current tax year. So if you go back, the last taxi or that you can claim for is the tax year that ended 5th of April 2020. Because a new taxi, the 2020, 2021 taxi, started 6th of April. So that's why this question is important. So you can say yes, you're claiming after. So you're claiming anything after the 2020, 2021 tax here. That's what you're claiming. Click on continue. Now the next question again, these are all eligibility questions to make sure that you're eligible to claim the tax. Did you pay tax in each of the years they're claiming for? Of course, if you haven't paid tax, you shouldn't be claiming tax relief. I've had someone say, well I just moved to the UK and well, I haven't paid taxes. Say, can I claim taxes? No, it's tax relief. You can only claim tax relief if you've paid tax. So you say yes, you've paid tax. Okay, continue. All right, so again another question. Do you complete self assessment returns? Then you say no. Because if you say yes and if you do self assessment, then this form is not for you and it's going to advise you the same way. So say no and continue. All right, again another criteria. This form is only for people claiming less than 2,500 pounds per tax here. So this doesn't mean you cannot claim up to £10,000 or, or more. It just means that for each tax here, the maximum you can claim using this method is £2,500. I think I made it sufficiently clear, abundantly clear in the previous guide. But just I might stress it, just in case you haven't watched the former video and you didn't have the opportunity to use the previous guide on how to claim back taxes, you can find our video still on this YouTube channel. So we'll say no, because you're not claiming more than 2005 for taxi. Okay, now big question. Has the employer paid any of your expenses in this claim? So again, it depends. If your employer has paid for it, you shouldn't be claiming it. So if your employer has paid for it or didn't pay for everything, you can say, yes, some of my expenses. But if they've not paid any of them, I'd imagine your employer hasn't paid your gmc, your bma, maybe even your indemnity. So mddu, mdd, us, mps, all those type of expenses, you need them to do your job so you can actually claim those ones. So you say no, none of my expenses. So click on continue. And when you click on Continue it tells you what you already know, that you are eligible to claim these expenses by post. This is the annoying bit. Basically, I don't know why HMRC decided to take two steps backwards because obviously if you did it online, if there were errors, if you, if you were claiming more than 2, 5, then the computer wouldn't let you progress. It will tell you the system will show you immediately that there's an error. Obviously there was some pain there. If you're trying to find general medical counsel, you wouldn't find it. You might need to do something like Medical Council General. If you're looking for bme, instead of seeing British Medical association, you might see Medical Association British. That was a problem with the online one. Obviously if you knew then you can navigate it now. But if you do the paper form and you post it to hmrc, who knows when they are going to get back to you or how quickly. And if there was an error, who knows if it might take a year to have the back and forth to them. Well, it says you are eligible to claim these expenses by post. What does that mean? Basically means you're going to have to download the form and fill it out. But don't worry, it's not difficult to P87 form now. Before sending your claim, look at the one in here. Check the guidance below for each type of expense you may need to send evidence to HMRC for some claims, complete a form and send it to send it by post to claim your expenses. Again, the address where you send it, we're going to display it on the screen after we the form. If you follow this video, when you get to that point, you'll see the address for HMRC that you can actually post this form. So it's no longer all everything. You can't just do everything online. Now you need to get a paper prescription. Sorry, not paper prescription. You need to do a paper form, put in an envelope, put a stamp on it, figure out the time that you can get to the post office and send it to hmrc. Right. Okay. So you can claim tax relief for professional expenses. Okay. The evidence required. You must send copies of receipts or other evidences to HMRC to show that you paid for the professional subscriptions. Now, some people have asked, how can I get my receipts? It's very simple. If you have a GMC account, GMC Online account, you can log in and actually download your receipts easily. I mean, it might lengthen the scope of this video if I try to start showing you how to log into GMC online, and I'm sure a lot of people have covered that area, but it's not that difficult. If you go to GMC website, the same with ROC gp, the same with bma. Most of them would allow you the opportunity to log in online and go and download those receipts directly. So you can use those, print them out and you can use it for, you know, for claiming your tax relief. Obviously, if you have any difficulty getting the receipts or if you have any questions, I'm quite happy for you to pop them in the comments session or send me an email or better still, contact the organization directly. For instance, if you were using MDD US for your, let's say, indemnity. If it turns out that, okay, you do need to download a receipt that is not available, then of course you could give them a ring or email them. Right, so let's crack on. It says claim by post. Okay. So previously that could be claim online, but now it's claimed by post. All right, so let's see. It says you're eligible to claim and you can do it with DP87 form. So it tells you a few more things. When you can claim, you can reach through. Says you can make a claim if your claim is within four years from the end of the taxi you're claiming for. Then your total expense claim for each tax is £2,500. Again, that's reinforcing that criteria to make sure that, you know, so the amount has to be less than 2,5. If it's more than 2,5. You need to fill a self assessment tax return. Also, you must have paid tax in the year you're claiming for. You cannot claim tax relief on job expenses if your employer or any other person paid back all your work related expense. An example of this is a mileage. When I was a trainee, basically registrar, you could actually claim your tax relief from the deanery Health Education England. I think her name has changed now, but there was the option of claiming it from them or claiming from hmrc. So if you had claimed it from the Health Education England, you shouldn't go back to claiming for hmrc. All right, there's some information on how to complete the form. Some people think it's helpful, some people think it's not that helpful. But basically you have to download the unsaved form on your computer. You can't open it and then fill it out, then send the form to hmrc. There's a link here you can click to download the form. So if you click on this link it can take you directly to the form. So we can fill out that form together. Lovely. So I'm not going to fill out things like names and titles and phone numbers. I think you know how to do this ones by yourself. But basically you can just click in and type. So if you click in here for the form, depending if you've got the Adobe, you can just type, then type your surname, you know, just that way. So you can do that. Do your date of birth as well. Fill out basically ni and everything. First name, address, postcode your personal details. Really I think we should look at page two. That's where I think it's most important to explain. So you can see that there is employment details here. They want to know where you were working when you paid those taxes so that you can claim against those particular periods. So you can see there's A, B, C, D, E. What this is is basically the current taxi and then the past taxi up to 4, the 4 previous taxes. So you can actually come here and you know, add, you know, to update it. So this is 2024, this is 2023. Because the year ending that you are claiming, if it's for last, is 50, ended 5th April 2024. So that's the last taxi. I usually suggest not to claim the taxi that you're already in. I usually think it's better to wait for the taxi to finish before you do a tax return or tax claim just because you don't know what tax events might happen. If you might incur some Extra expenses or things that you can actually claim through tax. So if you had to ask me and say it's better to start from the 5th of April 2024, we're doing this video now, I think the changes we have made in October, we made the video in November 2024. So depending on when you're watching it, if you're watching it in 2034, maybe the tax rules might have changed before then. So you can actually put in the year, you can say 2022, 2021, depending on which tax year you're claiming for. Again, if you've claimed for these previous taxes, obviously you don't need to claim for them again. You can just crack on if that's the one that is left. Okay, let's look at the other things in the rules. Employer payee reference number so you can get this one from your P45 or your P60 document. Another way you can get it is to log in your personal tax account. If you don't know how to log into your personal HMRC tax account, it's simple, just Google it. Or if you check the link in the description and you get like the guide, even the previous guide we made can show you how to get it has the link that can take you straight into the HMRC personal tax account. So you need to get your employer payee reference number for that particular job when you are doing it. So you can put it here for. Let's say you're working as a junior doctor in Royal Commonwealth Hospital during that period. So if you don't have your P, your P45 or your P60, then it's got to be through your personal tax account. You can get it out from there and put it in this box. All right, Job title. I'll just say doctor is simple, straightforward rather than trying to explain too much of your whether you're a consultant or junior doctor. Now employer name. Again straightforward. Like I gave you an example, Royal Commonwealth Hospital or wherever you are could be an option. Maybe Royal Dev on an Exeter. As you can tell I live in the southwest. Then first line of employer address. Again that seems very self explanatory. Employer postcode and then type of industry. I think I should mention here that for type of industry you don't necessarily need to put anything here if you are not claiming flat rate expenses. So flat rate expenses, like if you want to claim for uniform and stuff like that. But most times that seems to apply to nurses and carers, people that actually have to wear a type of uniform that they have to, you know, learn, you know, send to the laundry and all that. It doesn't quite apply a lot of times to doctors. So I will skip type of industry, obviously employee number in that particular job. Remember, this is just all under the column A for the 5th of April, 2024 year ending. So it all depends. If you've got other things to claim in other years, you can still go ahead and claim them. All right, so if you crack on, the next one is flat rate expenses. Again, like I said, most doctors and most doctors don't eventually claim flat rate expenses. If you're a nurse or your hca, you might be able to claim them. Put it inside here. Whatever you spent, then put it inside. I think it's a flat rate that HMRC would usually approve.

Right.

Now this is where the main thing is subscription to professional bodies, right? So all your General Medical Council, your British Medical Association, British Dental association, nmc, Royal College of GP or Royal College of Anesthetists or real College of Surgery, whatever, Royal College of Physician or even your mdu, this is where to put them. So again, this is for the, the taxi. This ABCDE represents taxi, where A is the most recent taxi you are claiming for and E is the most distant taxes. So probably because of what year we are in now, I think that they will. This would probably be for the tax year ending 2020, 2021. That's the one that I can claim. All right, so if you put in the names of the professional body, what I'll do here is I'll write in full General Medical Council. Okay. It's quite is a tiny space, but previously when it was online then you couldn't, you couldn't write General Medical Council, you had to search it out and sometimes you end up with Medical Council of General or whatever. So you can write those bodies there. So General Medical Council, you can write your British Medical association, whichever body that you're claiming, you can write them right inside there. I don't know why they've made the space small, but you can write. If you're using a pen to write, you might be able to get more into that box. All right, obviously there's amount of subscription. How much did you pay? So that's. That affects what you claim, isn't it? Because it's based on what you pay now, amount repaid to you, you put zero. Obviously if you've not gotten any amount repaid to you and then expenses claimed, you can also put zero fee. Sorry, expenses claim will be the, the total amount. So let's say you had gmci, had BMA and you had them, let's say rocgp, all in this box because then this is the only box available for all of them. And you go to account. I don't know what is the exact amount that you've paid, but let's say is 1200 for all this. So that's the amount you've paid. Amount repaired to you is zero. So expenses claimed will be 1200 minus zero. So that's 1200. Okay. So that's basically the subscription to professional bodies. Okay. But if you want to go down now, there is a mileage allowance. So if you have actually traveled, if you're working from home, obviously you don't have mileage if you are going to your regular workplace. But there's something called business mileage. So if you've had business mileage, you can also claim it here. I think it's 45p for cars for the first 10,000 miles and something like 25p below. You can always Google these things. Let's not spend too much time on it. But most time find out that when you claim mileage, there's not a lot actually that comes out from it. So if you've got a mileage in that tax here that you want to claim, then you can impute it here and put the amount. You can always use online calculators like the AA calculators to calculate the distance. And it's quite a very good one. I know that I used to use it many years ago to calculate the distance from one point to the other when I'm claiming mileage. All right, so for the first 10,000 miles you multiply by 45p. Then over 10,000 miles you multiply, but you multiply by 25p. That's what you can claim relief on. All right. And then you add it up as usual. Minimum maximum tax free amount. Cars, van. If you get in here this way, you add that. Okay, so I'm going to skip ahead now. Go to the next picture. There's obviously motorcycles. If you've got a Harley Davidson or a fantastic motorcycle, I think the rates are different. You want to check those as well. Okay. So basically it's just figuring out how to fill the form properly. So there's hotels and meals expenses. Again, this would depend a lot of times you might, it might be a bit difficult to claim this one, especially if it's not in line with your job. If it's in line with your job and even cure the expenses during your job, then you can always Impute them here, as long as you're submitting the receipt as well. Right, so there are other expenses. Now this is quite an important one because you can see there wasn't a lot of space to put some other things. Like your Royal College of GP exams, for instance. If you were a registrar and you did akt, so Applied Knowledge Test, then this might be an opportunity for you to come and actually put in those details. So that's other expenses. Or let's say you are doing pieces, you are, you are writing your mrocp. But what you do is remember, if you write akt, HMRC couldn't care less. They don't know what AKT is or they couldn't care less when it was online. So it's great because you get the feedback there straight away. It won't go through, so you know you've not done the right thing. So what I'll suggest is to write mrcgp, or you can write that in full. So Royal College of GP Hyphen, you know, akt. So if you write in full, I'm just writing basically because I'm typing and it's quite big. So Royal College of JP akt, so you can do the same with your Royal College or wherever and put the name of the exam maybe in bracket or hyphen next to it. So this would be the opportunity you put again, you put the amount you spent, the amount repaid to you and the total you are claiming for. So that's what to do in that regard. Okay, so again, this is obviously just another continuation. So record any additional amounts you have received notary already declared on the form. So HMRC is giving you another opportunity to say if your employer has given you some money, if you have other expenses that you've made that you've not been able to, you know, you've not found any other right place to put in. This is the place number 8amount repaid to you by your employer. All right? So total expenses. So this session you work out the total amount of expenses you are claiming for each taxi. This is why it's terribly annoying because when, I mean, I'm not saying I don't have anything against doing some maths, as long as it's not public math. And I know that obviously doctors, doctors. Now, to do basic math, we don't want to do very complicated once, but hmrc, when it was online, you could actually just impute it and it will calculate it for you automatically. I mean, it's 2024 and they've given us this form, they haven't bothered to make it a spreadsheet so that when you put in your expenses, it can run the numbers for you. All right, so you have to bring out a calculator, punch in everything that you've actually imputed and then make sure that your total net allowed allowable expenses they are claiming for the year does not remember, does not exceed 2500. So they said it cannot be more than 2500. But you should go back to those boxes that you filled in Lightbox 3.1, 4.4, the boxes where you've claimed, and calculate all of them. So if you do it that way it will be for one year and if you are claiming multiple years, like I said earlier in the video, I had this JP who for four years.

Had never not claimed.

He thought he was just allowed to claim once. So he claimed that he was starting his training and he didn't claim again and he was paying his GMC bma, different associations and all that.

Yeah.

So you can go up again and do for the other years if you wanted to or if you had them, tends to claim. All right, so this is number 10, how you want to be paid. So if you are entitled to a refund, payments can be made to you or someone on your behalf. None of the nominee. So basically you could tell HMRC to pay you or they can pay someone you nominate. So again, straightforward form, say all other nominees do not need to provide an ern. Okay, well agent reference number. This is a straightforward form. You can say, well payment by check, that's an option. So who do you want the check to be made available to? So you can tick here if you are using on your computer, if you're using obviously a pen, just tick so you can say make it payable to me. Okay, if you choose that, then you have to go to the declaration on page seven. It's probably something to say, well, I'm getting this check and I've told the truth. If it was a nominee you wanted, you can put in the nominee's name here. Okay, so you can say I authorize this check to be payable to my nominee. No, that's not the one we're choosing. We are choosing that is paid to us. Okay, so Nelson, are you nominating a professional acting on your behalf that charges a fee for their service? This is really quite important, right? For instance, if you are doing it through an accountant. So I do work with them, specialist accountant, not just for my personal tax and self assessment, but also for my business. So if you're working through an especially accountant. They've got their fees so you can take care. Yes. If they are the ones doing it for you, you can say yes. And by that you might be able to get some of the fees, claim them back. But basically here, if you're doing it by yourself, then you don't need to touch that bit. Okay, but I'm just gonna scroll up again, rather scroll down. Okay, so nominee agents reference number, that's what it is there. Yeah, you can include the details as well and of course declaration where you sign your name and say I and the green you say I have said these things and I'm saying that they are true. So the information I've given on this form is true and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. If you give false information you could be prosecuted. So that's the standard stuff. So double checking and make sure that everything you've provided is correct and you've actually checked it. Then you put in the dates and you sign. Okay, so that's the process. It might be a little bit easier to do the physical form than the online one. The only big challenge is the online form. Although someone said to me, oh, I really enjoyed just watching your video using your guide. And we did it step by step. We didn't even need to ask anyone any question or get any help. So the online form was good in that regard. The problem with the physical ones that once you're done then you need to get to the post office. I might not fall into your work hours then maybe before you need the time passes, I just like, well I don't have time for this anyway. So they're giving you additional information of what to do now says do not send any paperwork with this form unless you are claiming.