Home Office Expenses: Are you entitled?

home office expenses Jul 18, 2016

Do you work from home? Could mean dollars in your pocket.

Whether you are employed and work from home doing overtime during the week or weekends or you operate a business from home or your home is your place of business, we may be able to make claim, reduce your taxable income and put dollars in your pocket.

Employers expect more from employees than ever and yet often promote a work life balance. Weird. This means that you may be required to work from home as part of your normal working week. Your claim is broken down into two areas:

  1. Recovery of utilities like electricity etc - which is simply the number of hours overtime you did at home X 45c. The number of hours can be substantiated by a diary. The easiest way is to estimate your average overtime hours @ home hours and X 46 weeks allowing for holidays and public holidays. 
  2. Recovery of direct home office expenses - things like paper, toner, depreciation on printers, laptops - but not furniture. (You may need help calculating this)

If you are a MAD Business member click through to Tools and Templates there is a comprehensive guide there.

 

There is a really important distinction between running a business from home and your home being your place of business. If your business premises is elsewhere like a shop front, office, warehouse or the like, then you run a business from home and cannot claim occupancy expenses.

However you can claim all of your hours from home using the above calculation and you are most probably claiming your direct home office expenses already.

 

 

 Occupancy expenses require you to satisfy the carrying on a business at home rule. Basically if you meet people at your home for business, perform your work at your home, advertise your home as your place of business and have signage for your business - you are carrying on a business at home. The great news is that you can claim everything from Options 1 & 2 plus occupancy expenses. The not so good news is for home owners - claiming a % of your mortgage interest, building depreciation, land tax can result in a portion of the sale price of your home being subject to capital gains tax. (See Capital Gains Tax in Tools & Templates).

Data you will need to know in order to make a claim includes:

  • Total square metres of your home
  • Home office square metres
  • Mortgage Interest Amounts 
  • Land Rates Paid
  • Council Rates Paid 
  • Water Rates paid
  • Rent Paid
  • Home Insurance premiums paid 

MAD Business will ask all of the right questions to make sure we optimise your refund, call now on 1300 858 909 to leave your details or select from the menu above:

  1. ENTER YOUR DETAILS ONLINE from $145.00
  2. ALL BY PHONE  APPOINTMENT from $165.00
  3. BY MOBILE APPOINTMENT (Central Coast only) from $205.00

MORE TIME, MORE CARE, BETTER RESULTS. 

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