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PARTLY

As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly work out which business expenses are allowable.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

5 minutesto a draft.

30 minutesto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ita professional

What the alternative costsDocuClipper converts bank and card statements into clean spreadsheets automatically, but the supplied information gives no price for an accountant or tax adviser.

If this goes wrong, you claim an expense HMRC does not allow and may have to correct the return and pay more tax, with the final responsibility remaining yours.

What to actually do

  1. Hand it to a person

    The route this page recommends

    Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

  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 GOV.UK guidance on business expenses and note whether you are checking expenses for a sole trader, partnership or limited company.
    2. Gather each receipt, invoice and payment record, including the date, amount, supplier, description and the business reason for the purchase.
    3. Mark every item as business-only, private or mixed use, and add the business proportion where you have reliable evidence for it.
    4. Paste the cleaned transaction table and the copyable prompt into a chatbot, including the relevant tax year and business structure.
    5. Open every GOV.UK or HMRC source link supplied by the chatbot and compare its wording with the proposed treatment, recording unresolved items separately.
    6. Send the unresolved, mixed-use and high-value items with their evidence to an accountant or tax adviser before putting the figures on your return.

    Prompt

    Act as a cautious UK tax research assistant, not a tax adviser. I need to review business expenses for [business structure: sole trader, partnership or limited company] for [tax year]. For each item below, create a table with: description, amount, date, business purpose, business-only or mixed use, likely UK tax treatment, the specific reason, evidence I should keep, and a confidence level. Use only current GOV.UK or HMRC sources and include a direct source link for every conclusion. Separate clearly between allowable, not allowable, and needs further checking. Do not guess missing facts, tax rates or allowances. Flag private use, capital expenditure, entertaining, travel, clothing, home-working, finance costs and any item where the treatment depends on facts. Ask concise questions before classifying an item if the information is insufficient. Do not prepare or submit a tax return. Expenses: [paste the expense list or transaction table here].

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

What it gets wrong

  • AI cannot establish the real business purpose of an expense from a bank description or receipt alone.
  • AI cannot reliably resolve mixed-use, capital, entertaining, travel and home-working cases without the facts and tax context a specialist would ask for.
  • AI cannot take responsibility for the expense claims you put on your return.
  • AI can cite guidance that is out of date or apply a general rule to an exception, so each important conclusion needs a current source check.
  • A transaction list is not the same as evidence that HMRC would accept if it asks questions.

What caps this at PARTLY: regulated advice, legal accountability and judgement under ambiguity.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

AxisScore (0–2)
Output1
Inputs1
Verification1
Liability0
Effort delta1
Total4 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can AI work out which business expenses are allowable?
Partly. It can organise your records, classify straightforward items and point you to GOV.UK guidance, but mixed-use and unusual expenses need a careful check. This is not professional advice.
Can I use ChatGPT to decide if an expense is tax deductible?
You can use it as a first-pass research and sorting tool, provided you supply the facts and demand current GOV.UK sources. Do not treat its answer as the final decision, because you remain responsible for the claim.
What business expenses can I claim as a sole trader?
That depends on whether each cost was incurred wholly and exclusively for the business and on the type of expense. Use current HMRC guidance for straightforward items and ask an accountant or tax adviser about mixed-use, capital, entertaining and unusual costs.
Do I need an accountant to check my business expenses?
You do not need one for every simple, well-documented expense, but professional checking is sensible when the amounts are significant or the treatment is unclear. An accountant or tax adviser can assess the evidence and take responsibility for their advice, although responsibility for your return still needs to be understood.

Nearby answers

All Tax returns & HMRC rulings

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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