Business

Question: Can you deduct home business rent in bc?

(Posted by: BlueGold on 2010-03-10 00:55:31)

I operate a small business, and do principal operations from my home office. It says that you can claim a percentage of expenses if you do principal operations from your home, but elsewhere I've read that you can only claim rent in certain provinces (not bc where I am). Is the certain provinces thing just for non home business people, or does that include me too?

Posted by: BrainDeadZombie on 2010-03-10, 04:20:23

You can claim a portion of your home expenses as business use of home if you don't have another place of business, or if you otherwise qualify for business use of home. If you have a place of business that isn't your home, you can't claim business use of home unless you have a physically separate area set aside for the business and use it to meet with clients on a regular and continuous basis. It's covered in this guide: cra-arc.gc.ca/ E/ pub/ tg/ t4002/ README.html You definitely cannot charge yourself (or your closely held corporation) rent for use of part of your home and claim it as a business expense.

Posted by: wrighttax on 2010-03-10, 13:53:21

If you run a business out of your anywhere in Canada you can claim a portion of your home expenses as a deduction from business income. You do not need a separate room and declare it an office. You could use part of your basement or living room, usually a rough percentage for home office is 20% to 30% of area of home. If you where incorporated you as a shareholder could rent your corporation an area of your home for a business and your corporation could deduct the rent as an expense, and you would claim the rent as income and deduct a percentage of home expense against the income. Some of the expenses you can claim are: property taxes, hydro, heat, mortgage interest and so on.