As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly identify allowable business expenses for HMRC.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current business-expenses guidance on GOV.UK and note whether you are a sole trader, partnership or limited company, your accounting period and your VAT status.
   2. Gather the receipts, invoices, bank transactions and any mileage or home-working records for the expenses you want to review.
   3. Create a list for each transaction containing the date, amount, supplier, description, business purpose and any private use.
   4. Paste the list and the self-contained prompt into a chatbot, asking it to use current GOV.UK sources and to flag missing facts rather than guessing.
   5. Open each GOV.UK source cited by the chatbot and compare its wording with the proposed treatment, especially for travel, meals, clothing, equipment, vehicles, home working and mixed use.
   6. Mark uncertain items as needs professional review and send those items, their evidence and the chatbot's questions to an accountant or tax adviser before including them in figures for HMRC.

   Prompt

   You are helping me review UK business expenses for possible HMRC treatment. Use current GOV.UK guidance where available and cite the relevant GOV.UK page for each material conclusion. Do not present your answer as a final tax decision and do not invent facts, amounts, dates or rules. Ask concise follow-up questions where the facts are insufficient.
   
   My business type is: [sole trader, partnership, limited company or other]
   My accounting period is: [period]
   My VAT status is: [VAT registered, not VAT registered or unknown]
   
   For each transaction below, return a table with these columns: transaction, likely category, likely HMRC treatment, business reason required, private or mixed-use issue, capital or revenue issue, VAT issue if relevant, confidence, missing facts, and GOV.UK source. Use categories such as likely allowable, likely disallowable, capital item, private or mixed use, and needs professional review. Separate the expense question from any VAT treatment. Do not approve an item solely because it has a receipt. Flag travel, clothing, meals, home working, vehicles, professional fees, subscriptions, equipment, interest, gifts, entertainment and anything with private use for closer checking. End with a list of the transactions I should take to an accountant or tax adviser, explaining what fact needs resolving. Transactions: [paste a dated list of expenses with amount, supplier, description, business purpose and private use percentage if known].

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.