Work from home deductions

[Nice Guy Eddie 13731]

Now that my 9-5 corporate office job has me working out of my house 5 days per week, what are some tax deductions that I can take advantage of? My electricity bill is up, my previously personal use of internet services is now critical (& unreimbursed) from my job, and part of my house is only used for work.

Can anyone learn me on how to lower my taxes?  Also I don't have a personal side hustle out of my home, but would that help if I started something that operated at a 100% loss?

[Js1 87184]

The (Cannot be Named) Tax Cuts suspended home office deduction for W-2 employees. 

[HornOnTheBayou 9062]

What about for independent contractors? Most summers, I travel the state and the country presenting at workshops for teachers and I get a 1099 form from each school I present at. This past summer I did all of them from home. Are there any expenses I can deduct?

[deadshank 24654]

Deduct everything.  That will be your first offer to the bastards.  

[BearSchlong 8240]

2020 - aww, tax deductions, how quaint.

2010 - Hmmm, will it trigger an audit if I show 50K miles driven in my only personal vehicle, but deduct 48K of them for non-commute work miles?

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by BearSchlong

[Js1 87184]

7 hours ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

What about for independent contractors? Most summers, I travel the state and the country presenting at workshops for teachers and I get a 1099 form from each school I present at. This past summer I did all of them from home. Are there any expenses I can deduct?

Isn’t @Brew our personal CPA? 

[RDCanecutter 26893]

How about if you sort of lay around at home, pretending to work?

[TwiceHorn 32079]

Even before the tax law changes, home office deductions were known as extreme audit bait.

[Revolution512 1518]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Even before the tax law changes, home office deductions were known as extreme audit bait.

If your CPA sucks

[freyguy 4368]

Can I deduct my massive increase in hand lotion consumption?

[Brew 3049]

W-2, no deductions.

1099, take $5 per square foot on the office space or the percentage of the bills based on the percentage of the office space to the home space. Issues with depreciation on actual, so most I see use the $5 per foot deduction.

[Brew 3049]

1 hour ago, Revolution512 said:

If your CPA sucks

Not true, most do not properly take depreciation into account which creates a problem under audit on home office. Plus, the IRS keyed in on them for years because people did not have proper offices set up and were using stupid percentages like 50% of their house. I’ve seen more audits for home office related issues on self employed than most anything else except mileage and charitable contributions.