Investors & landlords

Thank you for your help

New Question/Issue
While diving into TT,  it asks how much of your business is conducted in your home office. Percentage of income comes from use of home office?

I use this room only for my dog boarding business, but the dogs also hang out in the rest of the house and the yard, and we take walks in the park etc...I'm confused now what percent of use this means. I had only subtracted the small percent % of my income that comes from clients that I visit at their homes.

 

Original cost (from rental period), including any capital improvements (not repairs) less all depreciation used on your tax returns in prior years = the cost basis to use when completing your home office expense.

So in this case it is OK to minus depreciation taken for the original costs?
Looks like I can ignore land and land improvements?

 

Take the home office square feet divided by the total square feet of the home to arrive at the business use percentage.

TT says if you rent a portion of your home you need to minus out parts of square footage rented out exclusively. This will be a pain because I only rent out a room a percentage of the year. I guess I can do each month individually and divide by 12?

I'm tempted to give up and use the simplified method, but my income is too low to benefit from itemizing deductions of mortgage interest and property tax, so I'm trying to see if I can do it this way.