Deduct your water, gas and electricity bills

You can deduct water electricity gas bills, in a similar way to rent & leasing costs. It is only natural: you need a place to work and for this place to work, you need to incur some costs. This is valid for water, heating & electricity.

As energy prices remain high, it is your duty to make sure you deduct those bills in the right way. We explain you why and how.

Under which conditions can you deduct energy & water bills?

To understand how to deduct such costs, we will distinguish 2 cases:

• If you rent a dedicated space, separate from your home office, it’s very simple: the entire invoice you pay out for energy is deductible, both for VAT and tax. The only precaution you need to take is to make sure the invoice in under your name or the name of your business. If you want to recover VAT, you will also need your VAT number on the invoice.
• When you allocate part of your accommodation to your professional activity (home office), you can deduct the professional part of the expenses related to this space. This part is based on the ratio between the professional area and the total area of your accommodation (see below for more info). You will, as a consequence, deduct less than 100% of those energy bills. It’s OK, it’s already a win.

Do you combine a dedicated office and a home space? The 2 rules can be combined: take advantage of them and deduct both bills 😉

I have heard I could deduct a “fixed cost” to cover those costs.

Indeed, some accountants choose to deduct a fixed “forfait” to cover those costs. There is nevertheless no evidence that this is correct in the case of a tax audit and we would rather recommend using the real expenses you incurred over the period.