The working from home thread: tips and advice

You could lump "stay the same" in with either side to make a rhetorical point, though...

It's the Evening Standard, they want their commuters back.

They certainly do

https://www.google.com/search?q=evening+standard+back+to+the+office&rlz=1C9BKJA_enGB623GB623&oq=evening+standard+back+to+the+office&aqs=chrome..69i57.11819j0j7&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1

Sorry if I am asking the same question again...

So in my old job, I was able to claim £6 a week or £26 a month WFH allowance directly with our employer so we’d get the money directly into our bank accounts separately to our wages.

New job doesn’t offer it so I’ll claim with HMRC directly and here is what I am confused. How come £6 a week allowance only equates to £1.20 tax relief? I understand £1.20 is 20% of £6 but doesn’t it mean we’d only get £64 to cover extra cost for WFH for a whole year? Last year I got £26 extra each month, so £312 for the year, which really helps. Am I not understanding how tax is calculated?

The government tax relief is on, as you say £6 a week. I think the point is not that that covers the cost of your working from home, but simply that you don’t pay tax on the proportion of your wages that covers the cost of working from home. (Sorry if that sounds obvious - exactly as you say, £64 a year is otherwise laughable.)

Sounds like your previous employer had decided it would cover the ‘whole’ costs of your working from home which they are also allowed to do tax free, but it comes from their pocket, not HMRC to the tune of the same £6 per week

Basically, HMRC will give your tax back, or your employer can pay you an allowance.

Worth noting that you can claim tax relief on more costs from HMRC if you can prove them.

So the gov assumes it costs an extra £6 for each person to WFH each week so that £6 each week is tax free? That makes sense but also doesn’t...

My previous employer is very stingy and wouldn’t surprise me if someone from HR/payroll got the wrong end of the stick like I do, which is probably why they are stopping this as of 1 Aug this year.

I know we can claim more but it hardly seems worth the effort. Say my entire energy bills minus water (because it’s fixed) is £60 a month, even if most of it is as a result of WFH, which it isn’t, 20% of that is still not worth my time to send proof etc...

Also. It doesn’t seem fair that those who pay 40% tax get 40% relief overall when 1. They could probably afford it more easily and 2. Nobody pays 40% of their entire earning... oh well... £64 a year with a few clicks on my computer is still a nice evening out with some friends.

I still think I am worse off WFH because like many of us who cycle, I don’t pay for transportation anyway, almost every colleagues of mine has managed to save £2-3k last year yet they still moaned about getting £312 for the year to cover extra energy bills wasn’t enough... some people!

like many of us who cycle, I don’t pay for transportation

HMRC value your cycling at 20p/mile in the same way they value driving at 45p/mile

I thought this only applies to freelance? You can’t claim for cycling to and from your place of work... so pointless for those of us who usually have an office.

Not just freelance, I could claim it if I cycled from the office to a customer site, I just couldn't claim it for my normal commute. Can't remember what the rules were for cycling to a customer site direct from home was (I rarely ever did that).

HMRC value your cycling at 20p/mile in the same way they value driving at 45p/mile

It was originally meant to represent the costs of the journey, and driving is certainly more expensive than cycling. But there have been endless calls for the cycling rate to be upped to 45p/mile to incentivise people to cycle instead as it would then be seen as a way of making money by claiming more than your actual costs.

(A simple rate of Xp/mile is never going to be accurate or representative for everyone...)

Doesn't cover your normal commute but you can claim for other journeys. It was just to point out that cycling isn't free. Your bike has wear, you need to eat more pie etc.

I've claimed a bunch of miles as an employee (eg my home in Barnet to Slough for a conference). Not all employers would let me though.

Why all those shirkers don't know their sacred duty to help the Standard sell advertising space is beyond me!

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/londoners-flooding-back-royal-parks-not-office-b941925.html

I'm definitely up for "flooding back" to Scotland.

Reckon I could get an airbnb up there for a few months, ride around a bit, vote for independence, etc?

Might need a new work setup at home as new gig will mean pc laptop. Ugh but I’ll try and make the best out of the situation.

I have an LG 5k screen now. Anyone using a tb3 kvm switch they can recommend?

I'm sure this has been done to death in here. I'm about to buy an office chair, and am probably going to get this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ergonomic-Executive-Adjustable-Headrest-Breathable/dp/B081HWKWN6/ref=sr_1_6?crid=23XXB5M2P5CG8&dchild=1&keywords=umi+chair&qid=1625134523&sprefix=umi+%2Caps%2C368&sr=8-6

Anyone got any recommendations of others to be looking at? I had back surgery a couple of years ago, so want to bear that in mind.

I've been using this one for two years, pretty comfy but attracts dust a lot: https://www.amazon.co.uk/mfavour-Ergonomic-Adjustable-Headrest-Function/dp/B07P6HYSZR

Recently one wheel popped off and wouldn't stay back in, I managed to fix it with a patch of duct tape (cut a hole in the middle of the tape and used that to hold the wheel in) but at this price point I wouldn't expect it to be robust or anything.

I can highly recommend a refurbished Aeron:
https://studiomodern.co.uk/demo-03/used-herman-miller-aerons-2/
https://www.londonaerons.co.uk/shop/

So Im now at my new work station at home, set up the wide screen with laptop. I've noticed some people have managed to set up their wide screens to act as 2 or 3 other screens. How is this done? How does one easily demarcate boundaries without creating virtual machines?

What OS are you on?

On Linux use i3 as your Window Manager.
On Windows use PowerToys and enable FancyZones.
On Mac... there's probably an expensive app in the app store that does this.

Home office update... finished painting the room today, replaced all plug sockets, changed the lighting, etc.

Once the paint dries I'll have the empty shell.

Things I've received: Desk, mounts for stuff on desk, etc.
Things I'm waiting to receive: Shelving system, new light fitting.

But once the paint dries I'm not going to wait, I'll be stripping my existing home lab and networking stuff, re-constructing my home rack, and then building the desk and moving into the space. I'm probably a week or so from moving into there for daily work.

I'll leave enough space to put up the shelving, etc... but I've enough to get started.

On Windows use PowerToys and enable FancyZones.

This is great! Thank you!

Some monitors have picture-in-picture, enabling you to have a single card output to two different screens on the same monitor.

Yep, I use(d) Picture-In-Picture on a 43" 4K monitor to give me a normal HD (1920x1080) "screen" for Zoom/Webex/Teams/screen-sharing.

Laptop connected to monitor by USB-C -> HDMI cable for the main 4K screen and then again using the HDMI port of the laptop for the HD connection.

A monitor with a remote (rather than pissing around with buttons hidden somewhere on the back of the monitor) is a huge plus. My Acer DM431K 4K monitor had a remote that made it really easy.

picture-in-picture monitor

Seems mine does....

I use both fancy zones and pbp on my 49”. Fancy zones for when I am just working snd I flick pbp mode on for conference calls where I may want to share a portion of my screen. To do pbp mode I need to run two cables from my PC to the monitor, so worth bearing that in mind.

Some monitors also allow side by side from two different inputs (effectively making it into two monitors but no bezel between them). Those two inputs can be the same computer.

One note on PowerToys, v0.15.2 allows you to install without administrator rights, unlike later versions.