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0 pointsdijit6y ago0 comments

Solved in other societies already;

In Sweden you can claim a tax deduction on the square meterage of a room that is used exclusively for work, but it must have a locked door.

I live in an 82sqm apartment and I have a 2.5x2 (5sqm) room. So I can work out the percentage of the apartment that is office and file that as a deduction.

In my case roughly 6%.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

bregma6y ago· 4 in thread

I don't have a door that locks anywhere in my home. Not even to the outside.

Where I live (Canada) there is a similar deduction for a home office but no requirement about having a locking door. That would simple be unenforceable, since tax auditors have no right to enter your home to ensure deduction guidelines are being followed.

We do, however, have a mountain of paperwork to file for both you and your employer to vouch that working from home is a necessary part of the job, and you have to be swear that that portion of your home you claim is not used for non-work activities more that some small amount of time. My estimate was around 5% of my home.

I suspect there are going to be fireworks in the near future as tax legislation changes are debated, with the never-homers trying to quash the forward-thinkers and their changes to the system. I also foresee insurance companies jumping in to take their cut.

dijitOP6y ago

This might be an example of the cart leading the horse.

Adding a lockable door is a reasonable requisite imo, if you're working from home full time and you're reducing the tax then the tax authority would prefer that you can't/won't use that space for personal use.

The Tax authority not being able to enter your home to ensure that does not remove the requisite of at least having a physically separated room, obviously there is give & take here. If you are given a bonus under the table from work that is also tax fraud.

throw_away6y ago

Maybe solving this with a tax thing this way wasn't such a great idea after all.

Heh, what about making employees who want to go to a real office pay for the privilege (with pre-tax money, of course)? If a job must be done on-site, then management must justify it in their budget and have the proper incentives to avoid it if possible.

52-6F-626y ago

Can confirm.

But I don't think that yet applies to remote workers for established companies with offices?

I know contractors and self-run businesses qualify—but I'm not sure if the rest of us do just yet.

There are many expenses you can use as tax deductions as an independent contractor that you cannot if you are an independent contributor within a company.

Hadn't thought at all about the insurance implications. Gross...

ghaff6y ago

>But I don't think that yet applies to remote workers for established companies with offices?

I am not an accountant and my understanding is that home office deduction in the US may be harder than in the past (and it's long been a red flag according to my tax guy.) However, I would think that the question isn't so much whether your company has offices but whether you're officially assigned to come into one of those offices whether or not you typically do.

I know if I ever wanted to take this deduction--which is probably not worth it for me--I'd have to get my office status officially changed.

bildung6y ago

Very similar rules apply for tax deduction of a home office in Germany.

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