Home Office Expenses - How do I deal with home office expenses when we moved from a home to a rental condo for part of the year? Our home burned down in Fort Mac.

[TurboTaxSamar · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry for your loss.

You can deduct the expenses using the following variables for EACH property:

1. % of the home which was used as a home office

Example:
Property 1: 200/1000 sqft was used for your home office
Property 2: 100/1000 sqft was used for your home office

2. % of the expense incurred for that portion of the year

Example:
Property 1: you incurred $1000 of total expenses for this property, but your home office is only 20% of your home. You therefore incurred $200 relating to your home office

Property 2: you incurred $500 of total expenses for this property, but your home office is only 10% of your home. You therefore incurred $50 relating to your home office.

In the example above, the total expenses for both home offices are $250.

Our software requires you to enter the amount of space designated for home office use and the total space of the home. However, you will need to use an average to do this. To arrive at the average % of space to designate between the two properties, using the example above, you can use the following formula:

Property 1: 20% x $200/$250 
PLUS
Property 2: x 10% x $50/$250 

For an average percentage of 16.67%

You would therefore enter 167 sqft / 1000 sqft for home office use. See attached screenshot.