How much of a rent or mortgage can I deduct from taxes when working from home?

[bugibar]

Hi,
I am running a small business from home. Can I charge some rent to my business if I work from my home and I am the owner of my business?
Thank you.
bugi

[sunset]

Hi,
I am running a small business from home. Can I charge some rent to my business if I work from my home and I am the owner of my business?
Thank you.
bugi

If you want to find out how much rent or mortgage you can deduct from your taxes when conducting business from your home, you simply take the percentage of space that you use for your home office and that is the percentage of home, electric, cable, internet, and telephone bills that you can deduct. If your house is for example 2000 square feet and your office is 8 x 10 which would be 80 suare feet then you can deduct 25%. 2000 square feet divided by 80 square feet is 25 percent.

[ramki]

I was told by one accountant to use the room count. For example, if you have 7 rooms in your house and use 1 for your business then 1/7th of all the total amount (expenses) can be deducted. Another tax advisor told me to use square footage. Check with your accountant for specifics.

[danisara]

If you do your business at home, a part of your home needs to be segregated exclusively for business use. For that part, you can deduct rent and utilities as itemized deductions.

[pawel]

Your home would need to be used regularly and exclusively for your business expenses to be deductible. You calculate the space that's your "home office" compared to the total space in your home to get the % you can deduct. For employees, its different and more complicated.

[D.Hooli]

You often underestimate how much you can write off, for example your office in your house or most type of mailing - even some personal stuff

[sunset]

It is pretty much given by the code what can be written of, but I agree, people often do not know about many things that can save them some money.

[D.Hooli]

Im talking here not about miscellaneous income, but my main salary from a university.  Ive heard from some people that I can deduct expenses directly connected with my work, but there seems to be no place to make such a deduction on the tax forms, so I never make such deductions. Does anyone know whether such expenses can be deducted, and if so how you do it? There IS a place to deduct expenses for miscelleaneous income, but not for main employment income.

[sunset]

Pls, specify exactly what deductions you have on your mind.
In general, I think you want to take a look at schedule A which gets reported on line 40, itemized deductions (federal tax return). If you work as a contractor, then you would want to take a look at schedule C.