Horse Riding Instructors — BHS Qualified Tax Guide

Teaching People to Ride — and Keeping HMRC Happy

If you're a qualified riding instructor, you already know that the job involves far more than sitting on a horse looking elegant. Between lesson planning, horse care, arena maintenance, and the relentless British weather, it's a demanding career. The last thing you need is tax stress on top of everything else.

Whether you're freelancing across multiple yards, running lessons from your own property, or doing a mixture of both, this guide covers everything you need to know about your tax obligations and — crucially — the expenses you can claim to reduce your bill.

Employed vs Self-Employed — A Critical Distinction

Before we get into the detail, let's address the elephant in the room (or perhaps the horse in the arena). Your employment status fundamentally affects how you're taxed, and the equestrian world has a lot of grey areas.

You're likely employed if you:

• Work set hours at one riding school
• Use their horses and equipment
• Follow their lesson plans and pricing
• Can't send a substitute
• Receive holiday pay or sick pay

You're likely self-employed if you:

• Work at multiple yards
• Set your own schedule and rates
• Provide your own horses (or have the choice)
• Can decline bookings
• Carry your own insurance
• Invoice for your services

Many riding instructors fall somewhere in between, and some yards incorrectly treat instructors as self-employed when they're really employed. If you're unsure, HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool can help, or have a look at our IR35 guide for the general principles.

If you are genuinely self-employed, you'll need to register with HMRC and file Self Assessment each year.

What Qualifications Count as Expenses?

This is a really common question, and the answer has some nuance:

Maintaining and Updating Qualifications

The following are generally deductible because they maintain or update your existing professional skills:

• BHS coaching certificate renewals and revalidation
• UKCC coaching qualification updates
• First aid certificate renewals
• Safeguarding training updates
• CPD courses and clinics
• BHS membership fees
• Coaching Ireland, Pony Club, or RDA membership fees (if relevant to your work)

Initial Qualifications

Here's the catch — your initial BHS or UKCC qualification costs are generally not deductible. HMRC's view is that these equip you to start the trade, rather than being expenses of running it. However, if you're already a working instructor and you take a higher-level qualification (say, moving from BHSAI to BHSII), this could be argued as updating your existing skills rather than acquiring new ones. It's a grey area — keep the receipts either way.

Allowable Expenses for Riding Instructors

The equestrian sector is wonderfully expense-rich from a tax perspective. Here's what you can typically claim:

Arena and Facility Hire

If you don't have your own facilities, you'll be hiring arena time. This is fully deductible — whether it's an indoor school at £25/hour or an outdoor arena at £15/hour, keep records of every booking.

Livery Costs (If Providing Your Own Horses)

If you use your own horses for teaching, the costs of keeping them are legitimate business expenses (proportionate to business use):

• Livery fees (full, part, or DIY)
• Feed and hay
• Bedding
• Farrier visits (every 6-8 weeks, at £80-£150+ per horse)
• Veterinary bills
• Dental care
• Worming and vaccinations
• Tack and equipment (saddles, bridles, numnahs, boots)
• Rugs and blankets
• Horse insurance

Important: if your horse is also used for personal riding, you can only claim the business proportion. If 70% of the horse's use is for teaching and 30% is personal hacking, you'd claim 70% of costs.

A single horse can easily cost £5,000-£10,000+ per year to keep, so this can be a very significant deduction.

Vehicle and Horsebox Costs

Getting yourself — and potentially horses — to different locations is a major cost:

• Personal vehicle: claim at 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles, then 25p thereafter, using the simplified mileage method
• Horsebox or trailer: fuel, insurance, MOT, repairs, and depreciation (if owned)
• Horsebox hire: fully deductible when for business purposes
• Towing vehicle: business proportion of running costs

If you have a dedicated towing vehicle used primarily for business, claiming actual costs often works out better than the mileage rate.

Insurance

This is a big one for riding instructors:

• Professional indemnity insurance (essential — you're giving advice and instruction)
• Public liability insurance (typically £5-10 million cover, often required by yards)
• Employer's liability (if you hire assistants)
• Horse insurance (injury, death, theft, third-party liability)
• Personal accident insurance
• Vehicle and horsebox insurance (business use)

Total insurance costs for a freelance instructor with their own horses can easily reach £2,000-£4,000 per year.

Outdoor and Protective Clothing

• Riding boots (long boots, short boots, yard boots)
• Riding helmets and body protectors
• Waterproof jackets and trousers
• Thermal base layers (specifically for outdoor work)
• Riding gloves
• High-visibility vests and tabards
• Branded polo shirts or fleeces

Remember, the clothing needs to be specifically for work or protective in nature. General everyday clothing doesn't count, even if you primarily wear it at the yard. Our guide on protective clothing and uniforms has the full details.

Equipment

• Lunging equipment (lines, rollers, side reins)
• Training aids (poles, cones, fillers)
• Teaching resources (whiteboards, diagrams)
• Grooming equipment
• First aid kit (human and equine)

Other Expenses

• Phone and internet (business proportion)
• Accounting and bookkeeping costs
• Marketing (website, social media ads, business cards)
• DBS check fees
• Stationery and printing

Seasonal Income — Planning for the Quiet Months

Riding instruction is notoriously seasonal. Let's be realistic about the pattern:

• Spring (March-May): Bookings pick up, exam preparation season
• Summer (June-August): Peak season — camps, holiday lessons, competition coaching
• Autumn (September-November): Still busy with regular clients, but daylight drops off
• Winter (December-February): Quietest period — dark evenings, frozen arenas, weather cancellations

If you earn £30,000 in a year but 50% of that comes between May and August, you need to budget carefully. Tax bills arrive in January and July (payments on account), and they don't care whether you earned evenly or not.

Top tip: set aside 25-30% of every payment into a separate savings account. This way, your tax money is always ready, regardless of seasonal fluctuations.

Tax Rates and National Insurance — 2025/26

Your profits (income minus expenses) are taxed at:

• Personal allowance: First £12,570 is tax-free
• Basic rate: 20% on £12,571-£50,270
• Higher rate: 40% on £50,271-£125,140

National Insurance contributions:

• Class 2: £3.45 per week (if profits are above £12,570)
• Class 4: 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% on anything above

A Practical Example

You teach 20 hours of lessons per week at an average of £35/hour, working 46 weeks per year (allowing for weather cancellations and holidays). That's gross income of £32,200.

Your expenses:

• Livery for two horses: £12,000 (claiming 80% business use = £9,600)
• Vehicle mileage: 8,000 miles at 45p = £3,600
• Insurance: £2,500
• Arena hire: £2,400
• Qualifications and CPD: £800
• Other expenses: £1,500

Total expenses: £20,400

Taxable profit: £11,800

In this case, your profit falls below the personal allowance of £12,570, so you'd actually owe no income tax at all. You can see why getting your expenses right is so important.

Record Keeping for Equestrians

Keep records of absolutely everything:

• Every lesson taught (date, client, location, fee)
• Every expense with a receipt or invoice
• Mileage log for all business journeys
• Horse costs broken down by animal (especially if some are for personal use only)
• Arena hire bookings and payments

With Making Tax Digital coming for income tax, digital record-keeping is becoming essential. Accounted makes this straightforward — Penny can categorise your expenses automatically, including those regular farrier and feed bills that are easy to lose track of.

Common Mistakes to Watch Out For

1. Claiming 100% of horse costs when there's personal use — be honest about the split
2. Not tracking cancellations — if a client cancels and doesn't pay, that's not income (obvious, but worth recording)
3. Forgetting to claim mileage — those daily trips between yards add up fast
4. Missing the self-employment registration deadline — especially common for instructors who start casually and gradually build up
5. Not keeping separate finances — mixing personal horse costs with business horse costs is a recipe for confusion

Let Accounted Take the Reins

You became a riding instructor because you love horses and teaching — not because you love tax returns. Accounted is designed to handle the financial side with minimal fuss, so you can focus on your clients and your horses.

Give it a go and see how much simpler your bookkeeping can be.

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Related Reading

• Self Assessment Tax Return — Complete Guide
• Mileage Allowance Explained
• Protective Clothing and Uniforms — What Can You Claim?
• Bespoke Tailors and Seamstresses — Self-Employed Tax Guide
• Chimney Sweeps — A Surprisingly Profitable Trade (Tax Guide)
• Nail Technicians — Self-Employed Tax and Expenses Guide

Accounted is built for UK sole traders — bookkeeping, tax, and MTD compliance in one place. See how it works →