In this 2026 YouTube tutorial, Ndubuisi “Andy” Egwim walks NHS and other healthcare professionals through the entire process of claiming tax relief on professional expenses via HMRC’s online service. He begins by outlining which expenses are eligible – home‑working extra costs, flat‑rate uniform/work‑clothing/tools, vehicle mileage, travel/overnight, professional fees and subscriptions, and other equipment – and clarifies which of these require receipts versus flat‑rate claims. Andy then details the eligibility checks required by HMRC: the claim must relate to a tax year after 5 April 2022 (within the last four years), the claimant must have paid tax in that year, must not be a self‑assessment user, and the total claim per year must not exceed £2,500 (otherwise a self‑assessment route is needed). He demonstrates answering the online questionnaire, selecting the appropriate expense categories, and explains the importance of indicating whether the employer has already reimbursed any costs. For each expense type he specifies the evidence needed: mileage logs (with start/end postcodes and purpose) and a supporting letter if the employer has not reimbursed, receipts for professional fees/subscriptions (e.g., GMC, Royal Colleges), and a detailed list with receipts for other equipment. Andy then shows how to log into HMRC using the Government Gateway (or gov.uk One Login), navigate to the “Tax relief for expenses of employment” service, and complete the claim. Throughout, he offers practical tips – downloading receipts beforehand, using a spreadsheet or template for mileage logs, and accessing a free downloadable PDF guide that includes step‑by‑step screenshots and a link to the guide. The video’s tone is instructional and supportive, aiming to empower viewers to file the claim themselves while avoiding common pitfalls.
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In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to check and claim any tax relief from your professional expenses, especially the ones you're legitimately entitled to, step by step through HMRC. Not theoretically. In fact, you can open HMRC while you're watching, pause me when you need to, click where I click, and if you're eligible, by the end of this video, you will know exactly how to make the claim yourself, or even you would have completed the claim by yourself. Let's dive in. So working from home could be something you're claiming, but you can only claim for extra household costs such as business phone calls, gas and electricity. So this might not be ideal for you, especially if you're just doing a straightforward, simple NHS job. Uniform, work clothing and tools is flat rate expense. That's about £80 now. That's something you should claim. It doesn't require any evidence or receipts to send. Okay. Vehicles you use for work. Um, well, you could claim mileage around this one, but again, keep a mileage log or something that you can provide as evidence. Travel and overnight expenses, I'll skip this one. Now, professional fees and subscriptions, again, is to approved professional organizations. You can check out the list again. That will be things like General Medical Council, Royal College of GPs, you know, medical defense unions and all of that. Of course, buying other equipment might also be something you did. Either you replace the stethoscope or you've done something that costs a bit of money. Okay, so if you, if you have other expenses, you can click here. Then I'll go ahead and click continue. So if you click continue, what does it show you? It brings you to this page. It says, who are you claiming for? Who are you claiming expenses for? Of course, I'll say myself. Then continue. Are you claiming for expenses after April 2022? Remember, you can only go back 4 tax years, so that's the threshold due to the current tax year. And when you watch this or use the video, you can also find out by just going back 4 tax years from where you are, because the tax year ends on 5th April and a new tax year starts on 6th April. So I'll say yes, I'm claiming after 5th April 2022, because that's a criteria. Now, did you pay tax in each of the years you are claiming for? Again, another criteria. If you didn't pay tax in that tax year, you can't claim tax relief. That would— that wouldn't be practical. If you have not paid tax, how can you claim tax relief? Okay, so I'll say yes, I did pay tax. Do you complete a self-assessment return? Again, another eligibility. If you do, then this is not the right form to use. So if you You say no. This is just the system confirming that you are supposed to use this form. Now, another practical important threshold. Are you claiming expenses of more than £2,500 in a single tax year? Why is this question important? Sometimes you might want to claim more than £2,500 because if you incurred extra expenses, you paid for so many things. Now, that would require you to use a different process. That's the self-assessment form. And self-assessment usually closes, I think it's about 31st of October for paper form, and electronically you can submit up to 31st of January. But this is not self-assessment now. We're talking about tax relief on professional expenses. So are you claiming expenses of more than £2,500 in a single tax year? No. And just to clarify, You might end up claiming, like when I first did this, I claimed about £7,100, and I've seen doctors who claimed £9,500, £9,000, £8,000, but not in a single tax year. So if you have a backlog of years that you've not used and you decide to claim them, you might still be able to claim more than £2,500 in different tax years, but, but not in one tax year. So it might be £2,500 in this tax year, £2,400 in this tax year, £1,000 in this tax year. Yes, but for a single taxi, it's ₦2,500. So the answer is no. Has your employer paid any of your expenses in this claim? Again, if your employer has paid, you can't claim it because the employer has paid it. So I'll say no, none of my expenses. Continue. Do you use a vehicle for work that you bought or leased with your own money? Okay, well, I'll say yes. So in this case, you want to claim mileage. So you might need to highlight that. So do you want to claim the approved mileage rate for your own, for using your own vehicle for work? Now, you cannot claim money you spend to get to and fro from your normal place of work. The approved mileage rate is for things like fuel, electricity, road tax, MOT repairs. You can only claim tax relief if your employer pays you less than the approved rate or nothing at all. Okay, so the question is, do you want to claim the approved mileage rate? I'll say yes. Okay, do you also use a vehicle that is owned or leased by employer? I'll say no. Continue. Now, of course, if you, if you've not done anything that requires mileage, or if you've not gone out of your normal workplace, then you can skip that bit. Now, here's the next question. Are you claiming for more than 5 different jobs? Again, if you're claiming for more than 5 different jobs, you say yes. But if you're not, say no. Most doctors I know are not claiming for more than 5 different jobs. But if you say no, then click on continue. So you've met all the criteria now. So it says you can make a claim for these job expenses. You can claim tax relief for uniform, work clothing, and tools. So work clothing will be things like scrubs and all of that. But they are flat rate expenses. You can claim for the vehicle you use for work, professional expenses, professional fees and subscriptions, and buying other equipment. Again, just to clarify, this is just— you can only claim for what you've actually spent on, what you've paid for. So if you have not really, you know, used your vehicle for work, you know, extra mileage, or you've not bought any equipment, then you don't have to include them. But everyone pays professional expenses, every doctor. Okay, now you need for this work clothing, uniform, and tools, if you're claiming a fixed amount of tax relief, you don't need to send receipts or records. Okay, so you don't have to worry about that. If you want to claim more, you're going to need receipts. Now for mileage, you must send a copy of your mileage log for HMRC for each job. I mean, it used to be quite simple to do a mileage log, and you can still do it with a spreadsheet, or you can go online, Google, download a mileage log template, include your starting point and where you go to, and it can help you to work out how much mileage you've covered. Okay, you should show why you made the journey, so the purpose of the journey, with the starting and finishing postcodes. Now, if your employer has not paid you back any mileage or travel cost, you need to send a letter explaining why. So these are some extra hurdles that have come in in the last couple of years. Now, for professional fees and subscriptions, you must send copies of receipts or other evidence. That should be simple. In fact, before you start this, or if you've already started, you can pause here, go to GMC, log in, download your GMC receipt for the year you're claiming, go to Royal College if you're a member of Royal College of GP or Royal College of Surgeons or Physicians or Anesthetists, Just go any Royal College you belong to, emergency physicians, download the receipts. Just have them by the side, you know. If you have paid for MDU or, you know, BME, all the stuff, just download it to make it smoother so it's not stressful. I've downloaded mine. I'm not going to cover in this video how to download your receipts from Royal College and all those ones. They are quite straightforward. And also in the downloadable guide, the PDF guide that you can download. It contains all of this, so you can check the link in the video description and download it totally for free, or comment if you're looking for the link and can't find it, and someone from my team will share it with you. So just have those ready because you must send copies of these receipts or other evidence to HMRC, and currently, thankfully, you can just upload it. Now, buying equipment, you must send a full list of your other expenses. If you did other expenses Including details of which job they are for, especially if you are claiming for different jobs. And HMRC also needs copies of receipts or other evidence that show the name of the item you've paid for. So it's not something you can just claim randomly. Continue. Now the next step is to sign into HMRC. Again, at this point, if you don't already have the HMRC Government Gateway or one of these other ways to log in like gov.uk One Login, Okay, then it's best to create it. Again, this is not the video. If we have to make a video on how to create that, the video will be so long. So what I've done is in the downloadable PDF, the guide on tax relief, I've also shown how you can open this gateway. It's not difficult. I assume you have one, but if you don't have one, just go ahead and register for one. So now I'm going to go through the gateway, the government gateway. Continue. Right, so first of all, you fill up the numbers. So I filled my numbers. As you can see, it's blurred because it's private to me. I'm not supposed to share it with you, so don't share your own with anyone as well. Then I sign in with my Government Gateway, right? So once I sign in, it takes me to my account, my tax account. It says Tax relief for expenses of employment. So this is my taxservice.gov.uk account. Again, it reiterates the points. You can use this form to claim tax relief on employment expenses if all the following apply.
