Yes, you can claim the office for both, just not the same space. You will need to prorate the space in the room between the two businesses. In addition, you have to meet the qualifications.
1. Regular and Exclusive Use.
You must regularly use part of your home exclusively for conducting business. For example, if you use an extra room to run your business, you can take a home office deduction for that extra room.
2. Principal Place of Your Business.
You must show that you use your home as your principal place of business. If you conduct business at a location outside of your home, but also use your home substantially and regularly to conduct business, you may qualify for a home office deduction. For example, if you have in-person meetings with patients, clients, or customers in your home in the normal course of your business, even though you also carry on business at another location, you can deduct your expenses for the part of your home used exclusively and regularly for business. You can deduct expenses for a separate free-standing structure, such as a studio, garage, or barn, if you use it exclusively and regularly for your business. The structure does not have to be your principal place of business or the only place where you meet patients, clients, or customers.
Generally, deductions for a home office are based on the percentage of your home devoted to business use. So, if you use a whole room or part of a room for conducting your business, you need to figure out the percentage of your home devoted to your business activities.
You can claim the same home office space if you have more than one Schedule C business, but you can't deduct the office expenses multiple times. You'll have to split this expense between the businesses so that you’re only claiming the total square footage space once on your return.
Here are a few examples of how you might choose to divide the space among your businesses:
- Divide it based on time.
- For example, if you use your entire office for each of your businesses, but use it for one business 60% of the time and another for 40% of the time, you could divide the square feet of the space 60/40.
- Divide it based on space.
- For example, if you have two businesses and one office measuring 100 square feet, you could enter 50 square feet for each business.
- Divide it based on a combination of time and space.
- For example, you might have special equipment for one business that uses 50% of your office space. You use the other 50% for both businesses, splitting your time equally. As a result, you would enter 75% of your home office square footage for your first business and 25% for your second business.
Whatever method you choose, when you start entering home office expenses, enter the full amounts you paid during the time you used the space for either office. Do the same for your other office.
It might seem like you're entering everything twice, but since you divided up the square footage earlier based on how you use it, all of the expenses for the total square footage will be accounted for on your tax return. TurboTax will calculate the correct expense amounts for each office, and the total expense amount will be correct on your tax return.
If you have separate offices for each business, for example one in the house and the other in the garage, you'd enter the pertinent information (like square footage) for each office space when you enter the information for each business.
