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Hi I'm Kristen Brand and I'm going to show you how to claim a home office deduction.
Now there are a couple of different things you need to understand about a home office
deduction. If its a guest bedroom or maybe its the room where you play with your video
games, probably not the best idea. Its really supposed to be a room where you just use it
for business and nothing else. And that kind of rule applies to the different things you
can exempt along with that home deduction. If you have a desk and you use it for business
purposes, then you can deduct that desk. If you have a computer and you're using it for
work, then you can deduct that computer. So that kind of logic will generally lead you
on different types of things that you can use for your taxes at the end of the year.
The next thing you'll really need to understand is that you'll have to document these things.
So its best to keep some kind of file where you put receipts so that you can prove that
you've actually bought these things in case you need to use them on your tax return. Some
other things that may not have occurred to you are different expenses that you use for
your home, for instance, your phone bill if you have an exclusive phone line to your office,
you can deduct that. If you use your Internet for work, you can take a percentage of that.
Maybe you spend half the time surfing the web or shopping and the other half for work,
then you can take half of that bill. So those are a few things that you can consider when
trying to come up with home office deductions. I'm Kristen Brand. Good luck with that.