How should I handle a home office deduction if I switch the self-employed business I used the HO for?

[hawksearcher]

So, I'm not sure how to handle this one:

I used our home office all year long, but for months 1-3 I used it in a certain line of business regarding online sales, then months 4-12 I used it for technical writing. Each of these fields have their own separate incomes and expenses, but I used the same home office space. So, in TurboTax, should I enter my year's worth of home-office-related expenses under each but just be sure to select "I only used this space for 3 months" under my first job, and "I only used this space for 9 months" under my second? That's a bit of a head-scratcher for me.

Additionally, I made some repairs to my home office ONLY during my second job, so it doesn't seem right that I should try to deduct those repairs under my first job when the repairs clearly happened well into my second job.

Any advice helps, thank you!

[PattiF]

This TurboTax Help article will advise you how to enter the time the space was used for each business. You could enter the repairs as 100% for your second business to allocate them accurately.

[hawksearcher]

Hello!

Yes, I did see the article. I suppose I'm confused by the following line, because this line seems to imply that I am concurrently using the home office with both businesses simultaneously, while in reality, one occurred before the other:

• 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

Or perhaps I am misunderstanding what they mean by "60% of the time"? Does TurboTax mean, like, "60% of the year" or something?

[ColeenD3]

Yes, in your case, you used the first office 25% of the time for the first business and 75% for the second.