What can a social media manager claim?

A day in your life (with receipts)

You already know your job inside out. So rather than a list, let's walk through a fairly normal day, and spot the expenses as they happen.

7.02am: You check three client accounts before you've opened your eyes properly

That phone is basically your office. You can claim the business share of your phone contract. If roughly 70% of your use is work, claim 70% of the bill. Be honest about it: the hours on your own feed don't count, however much it feels like research.

The handset itself counts too, again for the business share.

9.15am: Laptop open, kettle on

Your laptop is claimable in the same way: the share you use for work. Same goes for your internet bill.

If you work from home, you can also claim something towards heating and lighting. The simplest way is HMRC's flat rate, based on hours worked at home each month:

The kettle, sadly, is not claimable. Neither is the tea.

10.30am: Canva, Later, Adobe, CapCut, ChatGPT and that scheduling tool you forgot you were paying for

Subscriptions you use for work are fully claimable. Design tools, scheduling tools, editing apps, stock image libraries, analytics tools. Social media managers often have a lot of them, and they add up quickly.

While you're at it, cancel the one you forgot about. Claiming it is good. Not paying for it is better.

12.45pm: Lunch

Not claimable. We're sorry. A normal lunch on a normal working day is just lunch, even if you ate it while replying to a client's DMs.

2.00pm: Boosting a client's post

If you pay for ads on a client's behalf and then bill them back, the ad spend is a business cost, and the money the client pays you back is income. They cancel each other out, so you're not taxed on money that was never really yours. Just make sure both sides are in your records.

Ads you run to promote your own business are claimable too.

3.30pm: Content shoot across town

Travel to a client or a shoot is claimable: train and bus fares, parking, or business mileage in your own car.

If you're a sole trader using HMRC's simplified mileage rates, you can claim 55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles each tax year.

For any business miles above 10,000, the rate is currently 25p per mile, increasing to 35p from 6 April 2027.

Just remember, your normal commute doesn't count!

Props you buy just for the shoot count too. That ring light? Claimable. The new jacket you wore in the video? Unfortunately not. Everyday clothes are never claimable, even if they were bought for the camera.

6.00pm: An online course on short-form video

Training that keeps your existing skills sharp is claimable. A course on a new platform feature or editing technique fits. A course to retrain as something completely different doesn't, because it's for a new business, not this one.

9.00pm: "Research" on the sofa

Netflix, Spotify and the rest are personal, even when you're watching trends for a client. We admire the effort, though.

The quick cheat sheet

Keep the receipts (yes, all of them)

Snap a photo of each receipt as you go, or forward the email to a folder. It takes seconds at the time, and saves hours of digging through your inbox in January.