My husband and I file jointly but live in two separate rented apartments, one block away from each other. I have a home office in my apartment. Do I need to use the square footage of both homes as a base to calculate the % of costs that I can deduct for my home office? Or can I use only the square footage of the apartment that has the office in it?
Your home office allowed footage is based on the percentage of the space of the home you both live and have an office in. You don't include other houses.
Thanks. We live in separate apartments, one block away from each other. My home office is in my apartment. I used my apartment's square footage as the base for calculating my home office deduction. We used my spouse's address as our home address on our tax return, but I used my address as the address of my business. There seems to be no place to enter the fact that we live in two apartments.
Since you are using the percentage based only on your apartment and not the two apartments combined, be sure that you are only including expenses related to your apartment. This would include your utilities and the rent that you pay, not the combined utilities or combined rent.