I was told I can deduct a percentage of rent for using my apt as a home daycare. How do I do that?

[DavidD66]

You can take a Home Office Deduction if you are using you home as a daycare.  To do so, you will have to be reporting your income from the daycare as self-employment income and filing Schedule C.

To enter home office expense information in TurboTax, while logged in to your return, click on Search, Type in "Home Office Deduction", Click on "Jump to Home Office Deduction".  This will take you to the section where you enter your home office details and expenses.

For more information, see this answer by Colleen D3 to a similar question:

You will include your expenses for the room/rooms that you use strictly for daycare purposes. Most of the time, when deducting home office expenses, the room has to be exclusively used for work purposes only. However, the exclusive-use test does not apply if you use part of your house to provide day care services for children, the elderly or handicapped individuals. If you care for children in your home between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day, for example, you can use that part of the house for personal activities the rest of the time and still claim business deductions. To qualify for the tax break, your daycare business must meet any applicable state and local licensing requirements.

Special rules apply if you qualify for home office deductions under the day care exception to the exclusive-use test.

• Your business-use percentage must be reduced because the space is available for personal use part of the time.
• To do that, you compare the number of hours the child care business is operated, including preparation and cleanup time, to the total number of hours in the year (8,760).

Assume you use 40% of your house for a daycare business that operates 12 hours a day, five days a week for 50 weeks of the year.

• 12 hours x 5 days x 50 weeks = 3,000 hours per year.
• 3,000 hours ÷ 8,760 total hours in the year = 0.34 (34%) of available hours.
• 34% of available hours x 40% of the house used for business = 13.6% business write-off percentage.

[tracycooney]

what if i use the entire house for my daycare (all of the rooms) would I put 100% of the house is used and I work 11.5 hours a day that includes clean up time and I work 5 days a week 8,600 hours a year. what would my calculations look like? my total house Sq footage is 2000  and my total rent for 2022 was $28,940.

[RobertB4444]

When you enter your business into TurboTax it will have a section for the home office deduction.  If you click start on that it will ask you if you ran a home daycare center.  If you say yes it will ask you questions that are only relevant for a day care center.  Most home offices have to be used exclusively for business but the home day care center can be used part of the time for business.  Which is what you do.

You will have to enter the number of hours that you worked (11.5 hours a day x 5 days a week x 52 weeks a year is 2990) out of how many hours it was available to be used (8760 is the total number of hours in 2022) and then you will have to enter the actual expenses that you had for the house (not just the rent but the utilities as well as any other expenses) and it will give you the deduction you're entitled to against your income.

@tracycooney