Online courses & e-learning

Conditions

• For the self-employed, the cost of an online course or e-learning programme is an allowable revenue expense where the content updates or extends your knowledge or skills within the business you already carry on. HMRC's 2024 revision of BIM35660 explicitly confirms that keeping pace with new technology and changes in industry practice within the existing trade is a deductible cost — e-learning that falls within this description qualifies.
• The key test is whether the course relates to your current trade or profession, or would set you up in a genuinely new and unrelated one. An online marketing course taken by a self-employed plumber to help promote their own business is within-trade upskilling and is allowable. The same plumber taking an online accountancy course as a step towards a career change would be disallowable.
• Course platform subscriptions that provide access to a library of courses (such as LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, or Udemy Business plans) are allowable where the subscription is taken for business-relevant learning. Where you also use the same platform for personal-interest courses, you should apportion the cost on a reasonable basis and claim only the business share. This entry is about the educational content being accessed, which is distinct from the software-subscriptions category covering the platform technology itself.
• For a limited company, e-learning fees and platform subscriptions paid by the company for directors or employees to develop skills relevant to the company's trade are allowable against Corporation Tax.
• For employees: where the employer pays or reimburses the cost of online courses, the work-related training exemption under section 250 ITEPA 2003 applies — no income tax or Class 1 NIC arises. Where an employee purchases and funds online courses personally, the strict 'wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of the duties' test applies. This is very difficult to satisfy for self-funded training, even where the course directly relates to the job.

Common mistakes

• Claiming online courses for a skill area unrelated to the existing trade — the course must connect to the business you already run.
• Claiming the full cost of a learning platform subscription when only part of the usage is for business-relevant courses — the business proportion only is allowable.
• Conflating the online course cost with the software subscription cost. A course teaching you to use a software tool is a training cost (here). The ongoing subscription to use that tool in your work is a software cost. The distinction matters where a single platform fee covers both.
• Employees claiming personal relief for self-funded e-learning courses — the strict 'in performance of duties' test is almost never met for voluntary training taken outside the employment contract.

What to keep

• Invoice, payment confirmation or receipt from the course provider showing the course name, date and cost.
• Course description or completion certificate, to support a claim on review.
• For platform subscriptions giving access to a course library, a note of which courses were taken and how they related to the business.

Real-world example

A sole-trader graphic designer pays £30 per month for access to an Adobe-certified online training platform to learn advanced motion graphics techniques — a new skill within her existing design practice, directly within the 2024 BIM35660 principle. She also takes an unrelated cooking course on the same platform for personal interest; that proportion of the monthly cost is not claimable.

Frequently asked

Related allowances