How to Claim Home Office Deduction on 2013 Taxes

Have a home-based business? In the past, claiming a home office deduction was time consuming, annoying and complicated. Not anymore!

Thanks to the new IRS home office deduction, you can easily deduct up to $1,500 on your 2013 tax return when filing your home based business taxes. If you need to file taxes for prior years or for 2013 taxes, PriorTax has made claiming deductions simple for each tax year dating back to 2005.

How Much Can I Deduct for the 2013 Home Office Deduction?

In previous years, millions of taxpayers claimed home business tax deductions. In fact, according to the IRS, roughly $10 billion of home office deductions were claimed by 3.3 million filers for 2011. Annually, a cumulative 1.6 million unnecessary hours were spent on the paperwork, record keeping, etc. associated with claiming a home office deduction.

To help small business owners save time, the IRS decided to incorporate an easier option for claiming home office costs. Starting this year, the IRS incorporated an easy-to-calculate home office deduction. That means, on your 2013 tax return, you can deduct $5 for each square foot of your home office, up to 300 square feet.

Have a home office of 150 square feet? You’re home office deduction will be $750. Is your home office a spacious 600 feet? Unfortunately, your will be capped at $1500.

Can I Use the 2013 Home Office Deduction to Depreciate My Home? 

No. You can not use the new home office deduction for depreciating the portion of your home used in your business or trade. You can however, itemize your deductions and claim allowable mortgage interest, real estate taxes and casualty losses (on your home). Unlike previous years, the 2013 tax return, the itemized deductions mentioned above do not need to be  allocated between business and personal use.

If you have a home based business, the 2013 home office deduction is capped at $1500. However, expenses like advertising, supplies, & employee wages remain fully deductible.

 

If you need to file your 2013 taxes, you’ll be able to claim this new home office tax deduction for your small business with PriorTax. Although the new deduction is not available for prior years, you can file a late tax return and claim the previous small business deductions on PriorTax.

If you have been putting off filing your taxes, don’t wait any longer. After all, filing current year or past year returns doesn’t have to be time consuming and complicated. PriorTax makes filing taxes straightforward, quick and easy…. leaving you more time to focus on growing your small business!

3/11/2014 Photo via opensource.com on Flickr

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2014 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Tax Deductions and Credits, Tax Year 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.