r/TaxUK

For those doing side gigs / self-employed work in the UK do you actually end up paying much tax on your earnings?

For example, if you make around £10,000–£15,000 a year from delivery work or another side income, how much tax do you normally end up paying after claiming legitimate business expenses?

Are there legal ways to reduce the taxable profit significantly through mileage, fuel, insurance, phone costs, vehicle expenses, equipment, etc.?

Just trying to understand how people manage their tax efficiently and legally rather than losing a big chunk of their hard-earned side income.

I was made redundant from a large company and my employment ended in early September.
As part of my termination, I signed a settlement agreement for around £22,200 in compensation for loss of employment.
The agreement says, in substance, that the company believes the relevant termination payment should fall within the usual £30,000 tax and National Insurance exemption, unless they are legally required to make deductions.
When I received my final payslip, they had split the compensation into two parts.
Around £18,800 was treated as ex gratia and apparently tax free.
Another £3,400 was separated out and treated as taxable.
Those two amounts together make up the full settlement payment.
I raised this with HR/payroll and asked why the £3,400 was taxed when it forms part of the same settlement payment. I have also asked them to explain what tax rule required them to treat that part differently. So far I have been ignored and sent round in circles.
I am not disputing tax that is genuinely due. The issue is that the payroll treatment does not seem to match the way the settlement payment is described in the agreement, and the company has still not explained why.

Not sure what else to do.

So I am disabled. My employer has an office near my home address but it is not accessible for me (my wheelchair can't fit in the lift, no disabled parking, no evac chair operatives to get me out in an emergency etc.). As a result of my disability OT has advised I work from home, however I can't reasonably be expected to work from the office anyway. My disability is dynamic but degenerative so I will have and unpredicatble scattering of good days and bad days but will get progressively worse until I die. HR have refused to give me a working from home contract, this was asked for as part of a contract renegotiation last year, so the official document I got says I have to be in the office 3 times a week.

As I work from home, my employer has covered most of my major expenses since this stopped being my choice (desk, chair, headset etc). However, I have a bunch of work-only expenses (stationary, paper and printer, textbooks) I purchase out of pocket because I can't access the company's physical library and I don't go into an office often enough to collect from there. We also had to upgrade our broadband to meet my working requirements as I needed better connectivity.

From what I am reading about the rules of tax deductible expenses these would not meet the requirements of the law as tax deductible, (I don't have a wfh contract and there is an office nearby) unless there is a special clause for disabled. Can anybody advise if there is a way for me to claim these as a deductible expense? I figure it is easier to do this than sit on hold with HMRC for a few hours.

I recieve PIP but that doesn't cover my in-home help, let alone my wheelchair and other mobility aids, I don't qualify for much free help at my worse because I am independent still at my best, so on the "average" I narrowly miss out, just hoping this may help ease the burden.