Wear a uniform to work? You could be owed hundreds of pounds from the government

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If you wear a uniform for your job, you could be missing out on a tax rebate worth hundreds of pounds. 

Whether you’re a police officer, nurse, or in another uniformed profession, HMRC has issued a reminder that workers may be entitled to claim money spent on work clothing. 

This doesn’t just apply to traditional uniforms – manual workers who have to buy items like overalls, safety boots could also qualify, and plenty of other professions too. 

Exactly how much you can claim depends on your job, the type and cost of your uniform and how long you’ve had to pay for it.

What is uniform tax relief?

Uniform tax relief is a government scheme that allows employees to claim back some of the costs of buying and maintaining work clothing, if they are required to wear specific uniforms for their jobs.

However, you can only claim tax relief if you have personally bought, cleaned, repaired or replaced any part of your work gear yourself. 

If your employer provides the uniform or pays for its cleaning, such as through a laundry service, you won’t qualify though.

HMRC has a full list of professions eligible for this relief on its website, which includes chiropodists, firefighters, labourers, pilots, workers in agriculture and the armed forces. 

You may also be able to claim relief on specialist clothing that doesn’t fit a particular occupation. 

How much can workers claim?

The amount you can claim depends on your job and the type of uniform you wear. HMRC sets a flat rate expense for different professions, allowing workers to claim a standard amount without needing to provide receipts. 

You can also backdate your claim by up to four years, which means some workers could be owed hundreds.

The standard flat-rate expense allowance (sometimes known as a ‘flat rate deduction’) is £60, but workers won’t receive this full amount back – instead, they’ll receive basic tax relief on it. 

This means if you pay the basic 20% tax rate, you’ll save £12 in tax for each year you claim. If you backdate your claim for the current year and the past four tax years, you could get £60 in total. 

Nurses and midwives, for example, have an allowance of £125, meaning they can claim back £25 a year – or £100 over four years. Pilots can claim a flat rate of £1,022, which works out to £204 back per year for a basic rate taxpayer. If they backdated their claim five years, they could get a total of £1,010.

If you’ve spent more than the flat rate, having regularly bought new uniforms or paid to have them cleaned, you can claim for the actual amount instead. But in that case, you’ll need to provide receipts as evidence.

How to put a claim in

You can claim online through the HMRC website or by phone, and there’s an online tool to check whether you’re eligible.

If you’re employed and pay tax through PAYE, you can also ask HMRC to adjust your tax code so the relief is automatically applied in future. If you’re self-employed, you should include uniform and laundry costs in your annual self-assessment return.

And, as a reminder, you can claim for the current tax year and the previous four,  so even if you didn’t realise you were eligible before, it’s not too late to get some money back.

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