Claiming Home Broadband as a Biz Expense Could Be Worth £11.94

A new survey of 2,010 UK adults who are in employment has found that Brits spend an average of 8 hours and 35 minutes (weekly) on using their home broadband ISP connection to work, which it’s estimated equates to a monthly cost of £11.94. Many bosses believe you should be able to claim that back from your employer.

At present many businesses (particularly larger companies) do often allow you to claim back work related costs as expenses, which can cover things such as fuel for your car, public transport (trains, taxis), food and hotels etc. Experiences do vary but the lines tend to become a bit more blurred and complex when considering home broadband, not least with respect to the impact of phone line rental (where relevant).

However MoneySuperMarket claims that only 25% of employees are currently claiming back home broadband costs from their employers, which is interesting because they also state that 47% of bosses (i.e. company owners, board directors and director-level staff) believe the full amount should be considered an expense.

In order to calculate the potential worker broadband subsidy, the average time spent using home broadband for work purposes every month (34 hours and 19 minutes) was divided by the total time spent using home broadband each month (89 hours and 19 minutes) to give 0.38. This was then multiplied by the average monthly broadband bill of £31.08 to give £11.94.

At this point it’s unclear how other factors, such as the cost of home phone line rental (where relevant) or speed of the connection (i.e. work downloads may be quicker for some than others) should be factored (the survey doesn’t consider this). Likewise it could be difficult to demonstrate how much of your home connection is actually used for work, particularly in a family environment where others may be using the connection at the same time for leisure purposes.

When asked if they would consider asking their boss if they could claim back, 17% of UK workers said they’d ask for the full amount, but 37% said they would if they could demonstrate how much of their home internet they used to do their work.

Emma Spencer, MoneySuperMarket, said:

“Working from home is a benefit that many UK workers enjoy, but it’s interesting to consider the tools, like broadband, that they need to do so – and the potential associated costs.

Brits are busier than ever, so with more employees working from home or checking emails during their commute, it’s unsurprising that they may need to use personal broadband or data allowances to get their work done.

If you work from home, you may need faster broadband, especially if you regularly download large files or use video conferencing, so a fibre optic package may be better for you. It’s also worth remembering that some packages have a monthly usage limit, which means once a cap is reached, you may experience slower speeds or be charged a fee for over-use. There are a number of unlimited deals available which could be worth considering if you work from home, or if you work on the go, then the best option might be a mobile broadband dongle.”

Unfortunately a lot of people do still run into some familiar limitations when working from home. For example, 40% say their job role means it would be too impractical to work from home, while 18% are not permitted to do so by their employer and 9% say they procrastinate too much.

On top of that 8% said their broadband was too slow to work from home and 23% have already had to upgrade their connection in order to do so (rises to 30% for those aged 18-24 and 58% of company directors also paid to upgrade).