If the criteria for deductions are that they are required as part of your professional duties, does that mean if an individual maintains their own home but is posted to a unit on the other side of the country and thus has to live in during the week, then accommodation charges should be subject to some sort of tax relief?
Melchett unfortunately I don't think that will come into that category but there might be others. I was looking at the Mess subscriptions because QRs require us to be Mess members and are therefore a requirement of our employment.
I have just done a bit of digging, and whilst I'm nowhere close to being a tax idiot let alone a tax expert, my interpretation of the HMRC's Helpsheet 202 Living Accomodation suggests that if you have to live on base i.e. posted away from your permanent home address, the accommodation may well be exempt from tax if it meets the following criteria:
Some living accommodation provided is exempt from tax. The rules for
exemption are that:
• the living accommodation is necessary for the proper performance of the duties of your job, or
• you are in the kind of employment where it is customary for living accommodation to be provided and the living accommodation enables you
to perform your duties better, or
• you face a special threat to your security because of your job, and you live
in the living accommodation as a part of special security arrangements
in force to protect you.
Now to my simple financial mind, these rules seem to cover an awful lot of bases for the military, especially for those of us that have to live on base away from the family home as part of our duties. Indeed, carrying on from these criteria, the leaflet specifically mentions these exemptions potentially being relevant to members of HM Forces. If this is the case, and the accommodation is exempt from tax, does that mean we could put a case forward to claim tax relief on our accommodation charges? No doubt it would be a lot of work to process and find out the various values etc required, but in these straightened times any cash back in your own pockets has to be a good thing.