Home Office Expense

Categories: Accounting

Ah, the pleasure of going to work in your undies.

Working from home is becoming a Thing. Telecommuting is getting way easy. Thank you, Skype. Internet connectivity is becoming faster and better and more reliable. And traffic. Wow...traffic is getting bad everywhere. So a home office makes a ton of sense.

Why are we even writing about it? Because a lot of people take a home office as a tax deduction. And that, on your tax filings, is sorta like mooning the IRS. There aren’t too many brighter red flags that taxpayers can wave and subsequently get audited.

Why? You work from home. It’s a real business expense. You never even go in that extra bedroom or office unless it is honestly for work. So what’s the problem?

Well, first, there have historically been people whose pants were on fire when they claimed that spare room as a deduction.

And then what about the value of the house going up...and that many square feet, albeit just part of the home but allocated as an office, then being a driver of the eventual sale price of the house?

Lots of thorny issues, and the IRS just loves nullifying those would-be legit deductions. Still way better than actually going to work in your undies. Probably wouldn't end well.

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