From 7 May 2022, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will launch a new mandatory P87 form for income tax relief.
What is a P87 form?
Workers and agents use P87 forms to claim employment expenses. However, only employees can claim tax rebates. If you are self-employed, you can claim via the self-assessment system.
Taxpayers must submit a separate P87 for every job they claim a tax refund.
What is changing?
Claims for income tax relief on employment expenses are made using one of these options:
- a self-assessment tax return
- online service available to taxpayers (but not agents)
- print, complete and post the P87 form available on GOV.UK
- by phone (subject to limits) if a claim was made for a previous tax year
- substitute claim form or letter (Often widely used by high volume repayment agents)
The new form is available from 21 March and becomes mandatory from 7 May. You can find the form on GOV.UK.
HMRC will reject claims made on substitute claim forms, but the other options above will remain available.
Robotics will accelerate the processing of the new form if there are no attachments on the claim. HMRC uses Hyperscience – a sophisticated form of optical character recognition – to process without human intervention.
If the P87 form has attachments, it will require manual processing, which will take longer.
HMRC expects to extend its use of Hyperscience to other forms.
Links: HMRC to mandate the format of claims for employment expenses
