Can I claim accommodation and hotels when working away as a tradesperson?

Yes, when a job needs a night away from home, the room and reasonable meals are allowable in 2026-27. You cannot claim a room where you live, or where your business is based.

Plenty of tradespeople take work they can't drive home from: a rewire 150 miles away, a fortnight on a big site, a run of jobs down the coast. The rules below follow GOV.UK and HM Revenue and Customs' Business Income Manual (BIM), checked on 17 October 2026.

What GOV.UK and HMRC say

GOV.UK's list of travel costs the self-employed can claim includes "hotel rooms" and "meals on overnight business trips". It also lists what you cannot claim: travel between home and work, non-business travel, and fines or penalty charges.

HMRC's manual (BIM47705) starts from the opposite end. Food and a roof over your head are normal living costs, so they are not usually spent wholly and exclusively for the business. The exception is a business trip that needs one or more nights away from home: "the hotel accommodation and reasonable costs of overnight subsistence are deductible", and so are reasonable meals taken with the overnight stay.

There is one firm limit. The relief "does not extend to overnight accommodation and subsistence at the base of trade operations", even if a contract says you must live there.

Which stays count

The van row follows HMRC's example of long-distance lorry drivers who sleep in their cabs: the manual says the same treatment may be extended to traders who do not use hotels, so it is for HMRC to allow.

When a long job becomes your base

Most trades run the business from home and travel out to jobs, so home is the base. In our reading, the risk comes when you go to live near one site for many months and your business is, in practice, run from there. HMRC's manual on itinerant trades (BIM37670) lists the cases it relies on, including Prior v Saunders (1993). There, a self-employed ceiling fixer who worked mainly in London and rented a home there lost his claims for food and for the rent (BIM37665). Our guide on travel from home to site covers how your base is decided.

Mixed stays

GOV.UK says you can only claim allowable expenses for the business costs, and that you need a reasonable method of dividing a cost that is partly personal. In our reading:

• if your partner comes along, claim what a room for you alone would have cost
• leave out bar bills, family meals and extra nights you stay for yourself
• keep the meals reasonable: HMRC allows reasonable costs, not anything you choose to spend

A worked example

An electrician takes a 3-week commercial job in Bristol, too far to travel daily from home in Birmingham, and stays 15 nights in a B&B.

If the electrician's profit sits between £12,570 and £50,270, outside Scotland, the £1,320 saves 20% Income Tax and 6% Class 4 National Insurance: £343.20. This is an example only.

What this means for you

In our reading, a night away for a job is one of the clearer claims a tradesperson can make, as long as the job is genuinely too far to travel daily and the place is not where your business is based. Keep it reasonable, keep the receipts, and write down why you stayed. Our guide on food and lunch covers meals in more detail.

Steps to claim a stay away

1. Book the room in a way that gives you a receipt or invoice, ideally paid by card.
2. Note the job, the address and why you stayed, for example "3-week fit-out in Bristol, too far to travel daily".
3. Keep each meal receipt from the nights away.
4. Split out anything personal, such as a partner's share or extra nights.
5. Record the costs as travel expenses in your bookkeeping or Making Tax Digital (MTD) software.
6. If you are staying near one job for months, check whether it has become your base before claiming.

The free MTD check shows when Making Tax Digital starts for you, and the trades section has more guides.