Don’t Forget to Claim Your Home Office Space

Did you know if you work from home you can claim part of your house as a tax deduction?  Even if you don’t have a home office you can still claim part of your home.

Here is how it works:

If you have a home office you can claim that room by submitting the information of how many rooms you have in your house total.  I have 1 office and 12 total rooms in my home.  So my deduction for expenses and everything is 1/12th.  Yes, you can deduct that percent in electricity, gas, homeowners insurance, property tax, etc.

If you are just using a part of your house, but not a whole room you must find out how many square feet you are using verses how many square feet your entire house is.  That would be the percent you could deduct.

Telephone’s are tricky.  You can’t deduct the use of your personal phone unless you can prove certain long distance calls were made solely for business purposes.  It would be better to get a business line put in or skip out on deducting for the phone altogether.

If you rely on the Internet for your income than you can deduct your Internet charges.

I  am not an accountant so make sure you take this information to your accountant or use an online software program to help you.