Surgent's Home Office Rules

Overview

Since 2017, employees have not been eligible to take an itemized deduction for a home office. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended all miscellaneous itemized deductions for tax years 2018 through 2025. That deduction is scheduled to go into effect in 2026. Self-employed individuals can deduct office expenses on Schedule C, Form 1040. The home office deduction includes typical office-connected expenditures such as supplies, postage, computers, printers, and all the other ordinary and necessary expenses a person would have in connection with running a home office.

The home office tax deduction for the self-employed would cover expenses for the business use of a home, which includes mortgage interest, rent, insurance, utilities, repairs, and depreciation. This program discusses many of the most important issues relating to the deductibility of home office-related expenses.

Highlights

• Calculating the home office deduction
• Actual expense method
• Simplified expense method
• Definition of a home for purposes of the home office deduction
• Whether working-from-home employees can claim a home office deduction
• What is a “separate, identifiable space?”
• The “regularly and exclusively used” rule
• Defining a “principal place of business”
• Meeting clients, patients, and customers
• More than one trade or business
• Special rules that apply to daycare providers
• Separate, free-standing structures
• Depreciating the home

Prerequisites

None

Designed For

Accounting and finance professionals who need to know about the deductibility of home office-related expenses.

Objectives

• Understand the rules relating to taxpayers who are entitled to deduct expenses associated with a home office

Preparation

None

Notice

This course is provided by a third-party vendor. Please note that login instructions will not be available in the ‘My Upcoming CPE’ section of the NESCPA website. Instead, the login instructions will be sent directly to you via email by Surgent (info@surgent.com). Upon completing the course, your hours will be recorded in the ‘My CPE Tracker’ section of the NESCPA website.