Did you know that entrepreneurs operating their business from home may be eligible for home-based business tax deductions? To qualify, your home must be either:
- The principal place of your business (that means over 50% of your income-producing activities are performed there)
or
- Your home office must be exclusively for your business and used regularly for meetings with clients, customers or patients.
How to calculate home-based business deductions
The business-use-of-home deduction is found by calculating how much of your home you use for business — usually, if you have a home office it’s possible to take the area of your work space and divide it by the total area of your home.
A portion of household expenses that directly relate to your business — including utilities, telephone, internet and cleaning materials — can also be deducted. House insurance, property taxes, or rent may also be claimed.
If you operate a part-time business out of your home, expenses must be adjusted accordingly by calculating the hours the work space is used per day, divided by 24 hours to get a calculated portion of your total home expenses.
Employees and commissioned sales employees of your home-based business are also able to make tax deductions.
For more information, including what in-the-home expenses you can and cannot deduct, check out CRA’s guidelines for work space in the home expenses.