Life has changed drastically since the beginning of the pandemic and for many people, this includes the way that they do work. Some have taken their work home from the office and onto their kitchen table or home office. Although many workers are returning to their offices now, some things may be able to be claimed through taxes for the time spent working at home. 

Kaliana Johnston of Global Tax & Accounting in Ponoka has provided some tips for those who are hoping to claim some of their time at home on their 2020 tax returns. 

You can deduct work-space-in-the-home expenses as long as you had to pay for them under your contract of employment. In order to qualify for work-space-in-the-home expenses, you must either work from home more than 50 per cent of your time or use the space to earn your employment income and use it regularly for meeting clients, customers, or other people related to your employment duties. 

In terms of paperwork, Johnston says you will need to get your employer to fill out a T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment from your employer. From her experience, some employers do not know how to fill out the form and she warns that they are often hesitant to do so. In response to the pandemic, the T2200 form should only contain the dates that you have been working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Here are some things you can claim for work-space-in-the-home deductions:

  • Electricity Heating
  • Maintenance
  • Cell phone 
  • Internet costs 
  • Water 
  • Natural Gas Rent and condo fees
  • Common office supplies

Johnston recommends printing off all bills, invoices, receipts, and documents to prove the deductions. In her experience, the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) tends to pick on employment expenses. They also do not accept bank or credit card statements and only accept till receipts and invoices. Ideally, all receipts and invoices would have the date, service provider contact information, buyer (if possible), description of what was purchases or provided, and GST, if GST is charged. The CRA may also ask for the employment contract or an explanation of why some of these expenses have occurred. 

She also recommends calculating the percentage of the workspace by dividing the area of the workspace by the total finished area in the residence including hallways, bathrooms, and kitchens. 

As for maintenance, you cannot deduct materials or cleaning supplies to maintain a part of the home that was not used as a workspace, but if the materials were used to maintain the workspace only, then you might be able to claim a deduction for those materials or some of them. 

Here’s what you can’t claim for work-space-in-the-home deductions: 

  • Mortgage interest 
  • Property taxes 
  • Home
  • Insurance 
  • Capital cost allowance 
  • Commuting to work

There are some stipulations for deductions. The work from home expenses is limited to the amount of employment income remaining after all other employment expenses have been deducted, which means you cannot use workspace expenses to create or increase a loss from employment. 

You can only deduct workspace expenses from the income that the expenses relate to and not from other jobs or incomes. 

Lastly, if you cannot deduct all your workspace expenses in the year, you can carry forward the expenses, but again, you cannot use workspace expenses to create or increase a loss from employment in this scenario either. 

This article was written with the files from Kaliana Johnston.