Working from home for an employer expense question

[sensei_mike90210]

Hi Guys,

I worked from home while employed by a company and for the section of my taxes asking to input Home Expenses:

-For Electricity, heat and water, what do I put for each of the fields- GST taxable; HST taxable; and Zero rated & exempt? My guess is for GST and HST taxable, it is just the full amount I paid for Electricity, heat and water and I put nothing in the “Zero rated & exempt field”. Is that correct?

-For the section, “Amounts included above that related solely to the workspace of your home”, say the total sum of the rows above was $100 and 20% of my home is my workspace. Should I then put $20 in this field?

Thanks!

[TurboTaxSusan]

You would enter the expense in the column for whichever kind of sales tax you paid.

For the section, “Amounts included above that related solely to the workspace of your home”, you would just put in any amounts that you put in the section above that were used just for your workspace. You don't need to do any extra calculations, as TurboTax will do it for you.

[sensei_mike90210]

Right. So say my only expense is electricity , heat and water for the year, had HST (and not GST) applied to my bills and total cost was $100. And say 20% of my house is used as my home office. Therefore "Amounts included above that relate solely to the work space in your home"= $20 which is what I'd put in that box, correct?

[TurboTaxSusan · Accepted solution]

No. In your case you would just enter the $100 total for electricity under "Enter the expenses which you incurred for the entire home." 

"Amounts included above that relate solely to the work space in your home" is for something that is only for your workspace, so needs to be deducted at deferent rate then just the basic calculation used above.

[sensei_mike90210]

Ahhh got it, thank you so much Susan!!

[Emmilyy]

Hi @TurboTaxSusan!

Do we just claim the tax portion of the utility or do we claim the full value of the yearly charges? Should the number be just the tax paid, or does turbo tax do the calculation of tax for us? 

for example: utilities: $1200 per year or just the tax on $1200? 

thanks!!! 

[Ques_Solver]

You have to enter the total amount you spent on utilities for the year. TurboTax will calculate the deductible portion based on the percentage of your home used for business. For Example:

• Total annual utilities: $1,200
• Business use percentage: 10%
• Deductible amount: $1,200 x 10% = $120

Thank you for choosing TurboTax.