First Things First -- That Home Office Deduction -- Forget All About It -- August 1, 2020

Updates

Later, 8:57 p.m. CDT: a tax accountant wrote me --

The 2018-2025 nix is limited.

The cause for your concern applies to home office deductions for people who are employees.

I can't think of anyone who ever convinced me to take that deduction on a Schedule A - which is where it would have gone.

However, I took (and still take) home office deductions for people on their Schedule E - (rental real estate, royalties etc.) or Schedule C for self-employed.

But, the chances of someone being an employee and having a home office were pretty slim to start with. To qualify, that space had to be used exclusively for business. No hide-a- bed/guest room set up; nothing other than office furniture, business literature, file cabinets solely for business records, storage for business products/inventory to be sold. Plus - that was the sort of thing that had to be over 2% of AGI to get listed anyway.

As a practical matter, once the standard deduction was doubled - far fewer folks itemize. (That's where it comes in so handy to have an E or C to expense stuff.)  [I bet Trump knew that.]

Original Post

 
What did Congress and the IRS know and when did they know it?

Earlier I suggested that millions of Americans now working from home should consider the home office deduction. Well, I was wrong. Really wrong.

The US Congress, working with the IRS, discontinued this beginning in 2018, but for only eight years. Now, if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would suggest that we might not see the end of Covid-19 until after 2025.

All these years we have the "home office deduction" and then, all of a sudden it goes away, but just for eight years or so.