Thank you Mary K for your response. Since my son is a W2 employee, I understand now that he can't take the home office deduction for 2021, but I don't understand why TurboTax bothers to ask him all the home office questions when it "knows" that he is a W2 employee? We haven't done the California state tax return yet, but we will use TurboTax. Does TurboTax transfer the home office info from the federal to California? Will the California rules be applied automatically by TurboTax or do we need to do our own research? For example, preliminary research of the CA rules indicate that a home office deduction is only "allowed based on the percentage of the home that is used “exclusively and regularly” for business purposes and meets one of three IRS qualifications." So since my son's home is a 400 sq foot studio apartment, he doesn't have any part of his apartment that is exclusively a home office so I assume that he will not qualify for a CA deduction either. Turbotax did not make it clear that the IRS requires exclusive space for a home office. To make the situation clearer, should I go back into TurboTax and just omit all the references to my son's home office?
