The test for every claim is the same. A cost is deductible if it was incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade. Everything below is that one rule applied to a barbershop, including the parts where the answer is no.
Tools and equipment
Clippers, trimmers, foil shavers, scissors, razors and blades, combs and brushes, clipper oil and blade wash are all deductible as they are bought. So are capes, gowns, towels and neck strips.
Bigger items are different. A barber chair, a mirror unit, a backwash basin, a styling station or a barber shop fit out lasts for years, so it is claimed through capital allowances rather than as a running cost. In practice the annual investment allowance normally lets you take the whole cost off your profit in the year you buy it, which gives you the same cash result recorded a different way. If you bought the chair on finance, the interest is a running cost and the capital sits in capital allowances, so tell your accountant how it was paid for and not just what it cost.
Products
There is a distinction worth getting right. Products you use on clients, such as shampoo, wax, pomade, clay and shaving cream, are consumables and come off as you buy them. Products you buy to sell over the counter are stock, so whatever is unsold at your year end is carried forward rather than deducted. A barber who buys heavily into retail in March and treats all of it as an expense understates profit in one year and overstates it in the next.
Chair rent, shop rent and rates
If you rent a chair, the rent is deductible in full and it should appear in your records as its own cost rather than being netted off against your takings. If you have your own premises, rent, business rates, water, heat, light and the premises insurance you carry are all deductible.
Chair rent is also a status question. Renting a chair does not by itself make you self employed. HMRC looks at who controls your hours and prices, who takes the customer's money, whether you could send someone else in your place and whose equipment you use. A written agreement that matches how the shop actually runs is good evidence. One that calls you self employed while the shop sets your rota and keeps the takings is a risk for both of you. Our accountants for barbers page goes through the factors.
Laundry, workwear and personal grooming
Laundering towels, gowns and capes is deductible, whether you use a launderette or wash them at home on a reasonable estimate. Branded workwear with the shop name or logo on it is deductible, and so is protective clothing.
Ordinary clothes are not, even if you only ever wear them at work and even if the shop asks you to wear black. HMRC's position is that everyday clothing has a private purpose whatever you choose to do with it. Your own haircut, beard trim and grooming are not deductible either, however much the shop window depends on them.
Running the business
- Booking and card fees. Your booking app subscription, your card reader and the processing fee on every card payment. Record card income gross and claim the fee, rather than banking the net figure and losing the deduction.
- Phone and data. The business proportion of your mobile bill. If the phone is also personal, apportion it rather than claiming all of it.
- Marketing. Social media advertising, a website and its hosting, shop signage, business cards, loyalty cards and local print advertising.
- Professional costs. Accountancy and bookkeeping fees, public liability insurance you carry for the work, and membership of a trade or professional body.
- Bank charges. Charges on a business account, and interest on a business loan or overdraft.
Training
A course that updates or refreshes a skill you already use is a deductible running cost. A course that gives you an entirely new qualification or opens a new income stream is capital in nature and is treated differently. A barber taking a refresher in fades is in the first category. A barber qualifying in a wholly new discipline for the first time is in the second. Ask before you book rather than after.
Travel
Travel from home to the same shop every day is commuting and is not claimable, however far it is and whether you are self employed or not. Travel that is genuinely for the business is claimable: going to a wholesaler, to a training course, to a client at their home or to a second shop you also work at.
For a vehicle you choose between HMRC's flat rate per mile and a business share of the actual running costs with capital allowances on the vehicle. Not both, the choice is made per vehicle, and once you use the flat rate for a vehicle you keep it for as long as that vehicle is in the business. From the 2026 to 2027 tax year the flat rate is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or goods vehicle and 25p after that, and 24p a mile for a motorcycle. For the 2025 to 2026 return the first band was 45p.
What HMRC will not accept
- Everyday clothing, including plain black clothes worn only at work.
- Your own haircuts and grooming.
- Commuting from home to your regular shop.
- Client entertaining, in any amount.
- Fines and parking penalties.
- The private share of anything mixed. Apportion it; do not claim all of it.
- Anything you cannot evidence. A claim without a record behind it is a claim you may lose.
Records, and why cash is the weak point
Barbering still takes real cash, and cash takings with no daily record are the single most common reason a barber hears from HMRC. The fix is a routine rather than a reconstruction. Log every service as you do it, in a till or a booking app, so you have a daily total to bank against. Keep the banking tied to the day's takings. Keep receipts for the kit and the products, photographed on your phone if that is easier than a shoebox.
Keep those records for five years after the 31 January filing deadline for the year concerned. From the 2027 and 2028 tax years many barbers will have to keep them digitally in any event, because Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is measured on gross takings rather than profit: over £30,000 on the 2025 to 2026 return brings you in from 6 April 2027, and over £20,000 on the 2026 to 2027 return from 6 April 2028.
Want the return done for you?
We prepare Self Assessment returns for self employed barbers and for barbershops, and we will look at the chair rental arrangement at the same time. Returns from £120.
Accountants for barbersHow it lands on the return
If your gross takings from barbering were more than £1,000 in a tax year you need to be registered for Self Assessment and to file a return, even if you also have a job. The £1,000 trading allowance can be claimed instead of your expenses if your costs are tiny, but for a barber with kit, products and chair rent it is almost always worse than claiming the real figures.
The return takes your gross takings as turnover, deducts the expenses above, adds capital allowances on the chair and any equipment, and arrives at the profit that Income Tax and Class 4 National Insurance are charged on. The 2025 to 2026 return is due online by 31 January 2027, and any tax for that year is due on the same date.
Official guidance referred to
- Expenses if you are self employed
- Simplified expenses: vehicles
- Claim capital allowances
- Employment status
- Self Assessment tax returns: deadlines
Written by Ahmad Akhtar, Founder, Tax Mesh Ltd. Published 13 October 2026. This article is general information about UK tax and is not advice for your own circumstances. Rates, thresholds and deadlines change, so check the GOV.UK pages above or ask us before you act on it.
