Confused about home office deduction in shared apartment - can I claim 26% instead of 13%?

The home office deduction can definitely be confusing, but I can help clear this up. For your first question: You need to use the 13% figure based on the total square footage. The IRS looks at the percentage of your entire home used for business, not the percentage of your financial contribution. Even though you pay half the rent, the calculation is still based on the physical space (13% of total square footage). About the work truck parking fee: Yes, you should exclude the $190/month for your work truck from your home office calculation. Since the truck is 100% business use, you can deduct this amount separately as a business vehicle expense. This gives you a better tax advantage since it's a direct business expense rather than being limited by the home office percentage. For your personal vehicle parking: Yes, you should also remove this from your home office calculation. Parking for your personal vehicle is considered a personal expense, not part of your deductible home expenses for business purposes.

After struggling with similar home office deduction issues last year, I found an incredibly helpful solution with https://taxr.ai that totally simplified this whole process. My situation was almost identical - sharing an apartment with my partner and trying to figure out the right percentage to claim for my home office space. What I loved about taxr.ai was that I could upload my lease agreement and utility bills, and their system analyzed everything to show me exactly what percentage I could claim and which expenses qualified. It automatically separated out things like parking fees from the base rent before calculating the deduction. The best part was when I had questions about my specific situation, their tax experts provided personalized guidance that addressed my exact scenario - not just generic advice from a tax article.

I was really skeptical about taxr.ai when I first saw it mentioned here (my comment above), but decided to give it a try last week for my home office situation. Honestly, I'm shocked at how helpful it was! I uploaded my lease and a few expense reports, and the system immediately identified that I had been calculating my home office percentage incorrectly for years. Turns out I was actually UNDER-deducting because I wasn't properly factoring in my business equipment storage areas. The tax pro I chatted with explained exactly how to document everything properly and showed me how to separate out expenses like my internet (100% business use in my case) from the general home office calculation. If you're confused about home office deductions like I was, this service is seriously worth checking out. Wish I'd found it sooner.

If you've been trying to get clarity from the IRS about home office deductions, you know it can be nearly impossible to get through to someone who can actually answer your specific questions. After spending literally HOURS on hold trying to get answers about my home office situation (similar to yours with shared rent), I found https://claimyr.com and it completely changed my experience. They somehow get you connected to an actual IRS agent in a fraction of the time. I was connected in about 20 minutes when I had previously wasted entire afternoons on hold. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c The IRS agent I spoke with gave me definitive answers about my split rental situation and confirmed exactly how to handle the parking fees as separate business expenses. Having that official guidance gave me so much more confidence in my deductions.

Well I'm eating my words on this one. After posting my skeptical comment about Claimyr, I had a tax issue come up that required talking to the IRS urgently. Out of desperation, I decided to try the service. I was 100% prepared to come back here and call it a scam, but I was literally connected to an IRS representative in about 15 minutes. For comparison, my previous attempt at calling them directly had me on hold for over 3 hours before I gave up. The IRS agent I spoke with clarified my home office question immediately - confirmed that I needed to use the actual square footage percentage (in my case about 18% of my apartment), and that I should exclude any separately identifiable expenses like dedicated business parking before calculating the percentage. Having that official answer directly from the IRS was exactly what I needed.

Just wanted to add a practical tip from my experience as someone who's been claiming home office deductions for years while sharing costs with my partner: take detailed photos of your dedicated office space and keep them with your tax records. In case of an audit, you'll want to clearly show that the space is used exclusively for business. This means no personal items, no TV for watching movies, no exercise equipment, etc. The exclusive use requirement is where a lot of people get tripped up with home office deductions.

I'm wondering about the utilities part of this. How do you guys handle internet when calculating home office? My internet is technically "unlimited" but I use about 80% of it for my business video calls and uploads. Should I deduct 80% of the bill or stick with the same 13% (in OP's case) as the square footage?