A home office can provide a great tax deduction if you have a business or are an employee and qualify for the deduction.
Home office deduction when you sell. If you include home depreciation as part of the home office deduction and eventually sell your home at a profit you will have to pay a capital gains tax on the total amount of depreciation deductions you took while you were living there assuming you sold the home for a profit. If you re planning to sell your home at a profit and move up to another one you may be assuming that there won t be a tax to pay on the sale. However if you want to create recapture income from depreciation along with other possible tax consequences at the time you sell your home do not take the home office tax deduction at all. For instance if you use a room that takes up about 20 of your home as an office you can deduct 20 of the cost of maintaining that house as a business expense including mortgage interest taxes maintenance and repairs.
Office within your home. If your home office was located within your home you do not need to allocate the gain profit on the sale of the property between the business part of the property and. Generally when using the regular method deductions for a home office are based on the percentage of your home devoted to business use. What will the home office deduction do to your taxes if you sell your home.
A tax advisor can help you navigate allocation and exclusion of gains when you sell a residence with a home office. So if you use a whole room or part of a room for conducting your business you need to figure out the percentage of your home devoted to your business activities. You can deduct actual expenses for the home office or use the safe harbor method. Although you have been claiming home office deductions for a number of years you may not know about a potentially expensive tax trap that can hit you when the time comes to sell your home.
But it could be costly when you sell your home. Why the way you ve taken the home office deduction matters. A favorite tax trick of freelancers solopreneurs and small business owners is the ability to deduct a portion of your household expenses if you have a home office. Similarly if you want to keep your tax filing as uncomplicated as possible you can decide to forego the deduction especially if you think it s not.
However taking this deduction could have a tax impact when you sell your home. As the tax deadline approaches it is time to start thinking about some of the tax questions that are still lingering. I freelance as a staff writer as well as own my personal blog frugal confessions for the 20 30 hours that i spend each week working on my writing and on blogging commenting tweaking the look of my. The capital gains tax exclusion allowed from the sale of your primary residence could be reduced by the amount that you have claimed for depreciation on your home office.
When you sell your house after having claimed the home office deduction the deduction can affect your capital gains taxes.