Is stationery and postage
tax deductible?

Yes. Stationery, postage, printing and printer ink are allowable office costs for sole traders (GOV.UK), and landlords can deduct direct costs such as stationery and postage for the letting business (GOV.UK).

Stationery and postage are small, frequent costs that are easy to forget. They are fully allowable when used for the business, and they add up: a year of printing, postage and packaging can be worth claiming properly.

Is stationery and postage tax deductible?

The HMRC rule

Items used for less than 2 years, such as stationery, postage, printer ink and phone and internet bills, are allowable expenses. The rule comes from Office, property and equipment, Work out your rental income when you let property.

GOV.UK lists postage, stationery, printing, and printer ink and cartridges among the office costs a sole trader can claim (office, property and equipment). Items you normally use for less than two years are allowable expenses. For landlords, GOV.UK allows direct costs such as phone calls, stationery and advertising for new tenants (landlords).

When you can claim it

• Paper, envelopes, notebooks, pens and other office supplies.
• Printer ink, toner and printing services.
• Postage and courier costs for business post and parcels.
• Packaging and postage for goods you sell.

When you cannot

• Stationery for personal or family use, such as school supplies.
• Postage for personal parcels and cards.
• Personal items bought in the same shop and shown on the same receipt.
• Christmas cards to friends and family.

What to claim instead

If a receipt mixes business and personal items, claim only the business lines. Scanning or photographing receipts as you go, and marking the business items, saves sorting them at the year end.

How to decide if you can claim it

1. Was it for the business? A cost is only allowable if you incur it wholly and exclusively for the business. If it also serves a personal purpose that cannot be separated, such as clothing that keeps you warm or a meal that keeps you going, HMRC disallows it.
2. Is part of it personal? Where a cost has a business part you can identify, such as the business calls on a phone bill or the business miles in a car, you claim that part and leave the rest out, on a reasonable basis you can explain.
3. Is it a running cost or something you keep? It is a running cost, so on the cash basis it counts when you pay it and on traditional accounting when you incur it. Nothing about it needs spreading over later years.
4. Is there a specific rule? For stationery and postage, the deciding rule is stationery, phone, postage and printing: items used for less than 2 years, such as stationery, postage, printer ink and phone and internet bills, are allowable expenses.

Worked example: an online seller

An online seller spends £1,240 on postage, £310 on packaging, £120 on printer labels and ink, and £60 on stationery in a year. All £1,730 is allowable. Postage and packaging for goods sold could also sit in cost of goods sold, since they are direct costs of the sales; either way, they are deducted once.

Postage for goods you sell

For sellers, postage and packaging are a direct cost of each sale, and many put them in cost of goods sold alongside the stock. Others keep them in office costs. HMRC does not mind which, as long as the treatment is consistent and nothing is counted twice. If customers pay you for postage, that payment is part of your income, and the postage you pay is the expense.

Printers and office equipment

Printer ink and paper are running costs. The printer itself is equipment you keep: on the cash basis an expense, on traditional accounting a capital allowance, usually the Annual Investment Allowance. The SA103F notes allow small office equipment in box 23 with the other office costs.

Business cards and letterheads

Business cards, letterheads and printed leaflets are allowable; many sole traders put them in advertising rather than stationery, which also works. What matters is that they are business items and deducted once.

Keeping small receipts

Small cash receipts for stamps and supplies are easy to lose. Photograph them straight away or use a receipt app, such as TapTax's receipt capture, so the amount, date and supplier are recorded before the paper fades. If a receipt is lost, a note of the date, shop and amount, backed by a card statement, is better than nothing.

Stationery for employees and clients

Stationery and supplies you provide to employees for their work are business costs. Branded items given to clients, such as pens and notebooks with your logo, are gifts rather than stationery: allowable only if they carry a conspicuous advertisement for the business, cost no more than £50 per recipient in the tax year, and are not food, drink, tobacco or vouchers.

If you are a landlord

Landlords can claim stationery, postage and printing for the letting business, such as letters to tenants and copies of tenancy agreements, as direct costs of the property business (GOV.UK).

Where it goes on your return and in MTD

For a sole trader, the allowable part goes under phone, stationery and other office costs (SA103F box 23 on the full self-employment pages). Under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, it goes in the same category of your quarterly update, which is the category TapTax files it under when you record the cost.

For a landlord, it belongs in other allowable property expenses (SA105 box 29 on the UK property pages), and in the matching category of a Making Tax Digital property update.

If your turnover was under £90,000, you can use the short self-employment pages (SA103S), which ask for a single figure for total allowable expenses rather than a box-by-box breakdown, and the full pages let you give just a total in box 31 too. The category still matters for your own records and for Making Tax Digital, where each quarterly update uses the same categories unless you choose to send one consolidated figure.

Most sole traders now use the cash basis, the default from the 2024/25 tax year, which counts a cost when you pay it. On traditional accounting you count it when you incur it, and equipment you keep goes through capital allowances rather than expenses.

How much an allowable cost saves

The value of a deduction is the tax it removes from your profit, not the cost itself. At the basic rate a sole trader saves 26p for every pound of allowable expense, at the higher rate 42p, and in the personal allowance taper between £100,000 and £125,140 as much as 62p. Landlords pay no Class 4 on rental profit, so they save 20p or 40p.

What £1,000 of allowable expense saves a sole trader in 2026/27

• Basic rate (20% + 6%)£260
• Higher rate (40% + 2%)£420
• Additional rate (45% + 2%)£470
• Allowance taper band (60% + 2%)£620

Records to keep

Keep the bills, invoices or receipts, and for anything shared with personal use, a note of how you worked out the business share, such as a sample month of itemised calls or an estimate of business hours online. Recheck the percentage if your pattern of work changes.

From 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 keep these records digitally and send quarterly updates under Making Tax Digital, falling to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. The MTD requirement checker shows when it applies to you.

Common mistakes

• Letting small cash receipts go unrecorded.
• Including personal items bought on the same receipt.
• Claiming postage both in cost of goods sold and office costs.

Related expenses

This item sits in the phone, stationery and other office costs category, alongside broadband and internet, laptops and computers, mobile phone, software and subscriptions and streaming subscriptions. The A to Z of expenses answers the same question for every other cost.

TapTax sorts each cost into the right category as you record it, applies the business share where you set one, and keeps the receipts with the figures, ready for your quarterly updates and final return.