Are glasses tax deductible if used predominantly for VDU work? My client is self employed, and has a manual job, but uses his glasses when writing up his books.
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intrinsic duality of purpose
The glasses have an inevitable non trade use and therefore are not allowable.
must be solely for use on VDU
Only allowable in full, if used soley on your VDU mashup. Otherwise there will be a chargeable benefit, or in case of self-employed disallowed.
In your case, he has bought the glasses solely for writing up his books of account, so the cost is allowable in full, plus the cost of the test, plus the travel expenses to get to the opticians.
I'm with pauld
In general, I'm with pauld. My understanding is that there are exceptions eg. lenses that enable an employee to focus on a VDU a specific distance from them and so would not be suitable for general use.
Edit - I think Tony's 2nd paragraph is littered with assumptions and is dubious.
not making any assumptions
Edit - I think Tony's 2nd paragraph is littered with assumptions and is dubious.
I am not making any assumptions.
I am merely pointing out that in the case of 100% business use, the cost is allowable in full.
claim
i need them for my computer and they stay here at the computer and i have claimed - only the blind can see........
And me...
... the OP specifically refers to his client being self-employed.
The innkeeper's reference is to the situation where an employer pays for "corrective appliances" for an employee. His reference to S.326A, should, in fact, also be to S.320A, meaning that the reference to S.39 FA2011 is entirely irrelevant.
Where an employee pays for their own glasses, there is no expense deduction, and, in the OP's situation where a self-employed individual so pays, they cannot deduct unless W+E, as Paul and Andy say/imply.
Tony's first paragraph isn't completely correct and he does seem to have got a bit carried away (in a creative sort of way) in the second paragraph.
EDIT. I was posting after Andy, but there were a couple of interlopers!
I believe ...
that a large chain of opticians has a tick box on their website which says something like ' Required for VDU use y/n' ...if you tick 'yes' the prescription is generated with a suitable description.
Thank you all. Very helpful indeed. Collective feeling would appear to be wholly & exclusively override is paramount. If glasses are not for VDU only, and serve to allow client to say, tie his shoelaces, expense fails test.
Steve is right
As an employee, to reclaim the cost of the glasses the optician has to certify that the glasses are only prescribed because they are needed for VDU work. The opticians themselves have very strict criteria as to when they will certify that, and I received a detailed explanation as to why they couldn't say that for me even though they recommended a separate pair for computer work.
As self-employed I would expect that unless you could demonstrate no private use of the glasses they would fail the test.
Harsh test
I think you have to refute any possibility of private use. Thus if you are use a pair purely for VDU useage, you also have to show that you didn't use the PC for non-business purposes, answered no personal emails, never watched something on iplayer etc etc.
Don't entirely agree Marion
For revenue expenditure, use isn't the determining factor, the treatment is decided by purpose. The expenditure must be "wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade".
For capital allowances purposes, however, use is relevant and allowances for mixed-use assets fall to be apportioned.
One approach, therefore, might be to claim that the glasses are capital expenditure and claim a proportion of the capital allowances on them
For what it's worth
my opinion is that if they are used to take a stiff drink to enable the client to face doing his books that is W&E. If, however the intention is to drink a whole bottle of wine while doing same that is recreational and no allowance!
I don't do tax...
as my next question will clearly demonstrate (and it is far too long since my studies to remember this).
I understand the W&E argument above so how come you can, for instance, apportion home costs if working from home or car costs?
Because...
... whilst you can't wear 50% of a pair of glasses, you can enjoy (W+E) heat and light in the 10% of the house you use for business.
Clearly
you haven't seen my glasses. :-)
Sorry to be thick as the proverbial 2 short planks but why can't your glasses use be W&E for business when, say, using the monitor? Or conversely how can you use 50% of a car?
I realise this is not really the forum and I ought to go and dig out the books.
Edit: Actually re-reading the posts above, I think I get it - I'm confusing the treatments of revenue and capital expenditure.
I have 2 pairs
I use 2 pairs of glasses.
One are vari-focals, which I have to wear all the time due to age related blindness, and the others are what the optitian calls 'occupational lenses' which are vari-focals but are just the middle distance and reading parts for use at my desk/computer.
These occupational glasses sit on my keyboard when I am not at my desk because I swap to wearing the other around the house.
I always claim the occupational glasses as capital expenditure with a life of 2 years.