How to Claim Home Office Deductions

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Kristen Brand and I'm going to show you how to claim a home office deduction. Now there are a couple of different things you need to understand about a home office deduction. If its a guest bedroom or maybe its the room where you play with your video games, probably not the best idea. Its really supposed to be a room where you just use it for business and nothing else. And that kind of rule applies to the different things you can exempt along with that home deduction. If you have a desk and you use it for business purposes, then you can deduct that desk. If you have a computer and you're using it for work, then you can deduct that computer. So that kind of logic will generally lead you on different types of things that you can use for your taxes at the end of the year. The next thing you'll really need to understand is that you'll have to document these things. So its best to keep some kind of file where you put receipts so that you can prove that you've actually bought these things in case you need to use them on your tax return. Some other things that may not have occurred to you are different expenses that you use for your home, for instance, your phone bill if you have an exclusive phone line to your office, you can deduct that. If you use your Internet for work, you can take a percentage of that. Maybe you spend half the time surfing the web or shopping and the other half for work, then you can take half of that bill. So those are a few things that you can consider when trying to come up with home office deductions. I'm Kristen Brand. Good luck with that."