Who Can Deduct Work- Space-In-Home Expenses?

Employees may be able to deduct work-space-in-home expenses if all the following criteria are met:

1. Your employer required you to work from home (written or verbal agreement). For 2023, the employee will be considered to satisfy this criteria if they have voluntarily entered into a formal telework agreement with their employer.

• You were required to pay for expenses related to the work space in your home, but no deduction is allowed for expenses reimbursed by your employer.

3. One of the following applies
   1. Your work space is where you mainly (more than 50% of the time) work for a period of at least 4 consecutive weeks in the year. If you have more than 1 eligible period during the year, you can claim your expenses for each period.
      OR
   2. You only use your work space to earn employment income, AND you use it regularly and continually for in-person meetings with clients, customers, or other people while doing your work.

• Your expenses are used directly in your work.

• You must have a completed and signed copy of Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment, from your employer.

What are deductible Home Expenses?

In order for expenses not reimbursed by the employer to be deductible, the above criteria must be met.

Allowed expenses include heat, electricity, light bulbs, cleaning materials, maintenance, etc.  If the home is rented, a reasonable portion of the rent may be deducted. Note that you can now include reasonably monthly home internet access fees as part of the work space in the home expenses.

Mortgage interest and capital cost allowance (depreciation) may not be deducted.

Simple Method No Longer Allowed

During Covid people working from home were allowed to use a simplified method for calculating home expense deductions. This method is no longer allowed for 2023.