SBH I have been luck that my employer has paid my fees for the last few years but before that I used to claim the tax relief. Look on the open gov web site there should be a form. In the bad old days you could just ring them up! Not sure if you can back date your claims. Good luck.

Some years ago some of us in IOSH learned that tax relief was available to those of us who paid our own IOSH membership fees and were also able to reclaim the tax element of the fees we had paid for the previous 5 (possibly 6) years. After we did this HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) assumed that we remained as members and therefore included professional membership of IOSH when calculating our annual tax codes. Recipients of notices of tax codings from HMRC are no doubt obliged to inform HMRC of any changes (e.g. changes to or cessation of membership) which would affect their codings. I'm not sure how HMRC knows what fees are paid by members of professional bodies, so can only guess that there is some sort of updating arrangement between HMRC and such bodies. Please can anyone in the IOSH membership dept advise about this aspect? As regards claiming back tax on fees for previous years, it's best to check with HMRC as the rules may have changed in recent years.

In a nutshell, yes. You are entitled to set the cost of fees against your taxable income as long as you have paid them and not your employer . Thus you owe no income tax on the amount of your annual subs. How you get that relief rather depends on how you file your returns. see this HMRC page for further info. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/relief-subs.htm p48