Tax Insights

There was a time that determining the correct home office deduction was complicated and could lead directly to an audit. Luckily, those days are in the past. The IRS no longer considers a home office a red flag, and they have found ways to simplify the process of taking this deduction.

Before 2013, business owners that worked out of their home were required to determine the actual expenses of their home office. This could include items such as utilities, insurance, and mortgage interest. The amount that could be deducted as a business expense was determined by the percentage of the total square footage of your home that was used for office space, but in 2013 that all changed.

For taxable years of 2013 and beyond, the IRS has introduced a simplified option. This allows business owners to multiply a prescribed rate by the square footage of the home that is being used as office space to determine the allowable deduction.

This change permits business owners to reduce the need for recordkeeping as actual expenses no longer need to be tracked.

There are two requirements that a business owner needs to meet to be eligible for the home office tax deduction. First, the area of your home that is used for your office must be used exclusively for conducting business. That means a kitchen table is not a home office, but if you have a room in your home that you use for office space exclusively, that would qualify under the IRS rules.

Secondly, your home office must be your principal place of business. That doesn’t mean you can’t have an office elsewhere, but you need to be using your home office for meetings with clients, or some other activity that would suggest it is not simply an area that you work in from time-to-time.

If you have a home office, don’t hesitate to take the deduction you are entitled to. With the simplified option to determine your deduction, this is one time the IRS has made it too easy to pass up.