Claiming Your Home Office Expenses

If you're like a lot of Canadians, the 2020 pandemic saw a huge wave of people leave onsite locations and move to a home office. Now, even in 2024, a lot of us are still working from home - at least part time.

For the 2023 tax year CRA no longer allows the simplified $2/day Working From Home deduction and has moved back to the original Employment Expense calculation.

Here's what you need to know to claim your home office expenses on your 2023 tax return.

In order to claim any home office expenses you must work from home at least 50% of the time and your employer must sign a T2200 Declaration of Conditions of Employment form stating that you work from home.

Rent & Utilities

You can claim the following home office expenses as long as the company does not reimburse you for them:

• Rent

• Heat

• Water

• Electricity

• Internet

If you own your home unfortunately you are only able to claim your utilities.

You'll claim all of these expenses on a T777 on your tax return.

To calculate what percentage of your rent and utilities you can claim you'll need to divide your home office square footage by the total square footage of the home. This will give you your employment use percentage.

Home office square footage / Total home square footage = Employment use %

Once you have this percentage add up your home office expenses listed above for the months you worked from home and multiply the total by the employment use percentage.

Total home office expenses x Employment use % = Home office deduction

Cell Phone

If you use your own cell phone for work and the company does not cover this expense, you can claim your monthly cell phone bills. The company will need to mark on the T2200 that you must use your personal cell phone for work and that this expense is not reimbursed.

You will also claim this on the T777 on line 9270 'Employment use of cell phone'.

Office Supplies

If you need to purchase office supplies like pens, paper, postage, stationary, ink/toner etc. and the company does not reimburse you for this you can claim these expenses on the T777 on line 8810 'Office supplies'.

However, you are not able to claim any assets/capital expenses including machinery like a computer or printer, or office furniture like a desk or chair.