Freelance Money Tools
Deductions

Your desk corner is a tax deduction. Two ways to claim it.

The IRS gives you a choice: flat $5 per square foot, or a slice of your real housing costs. This tool runs both and tells you which wins.

Both IRS methods compared
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Tax data last updated: July 2026. Sources & methodology

Your space

sq ft

The part of your home used regularly and exclusively for work.

sq ft

Whole apartment or house, in square feet.

$

Rent or mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, repairs — the full year.

Your best home office deduction
$3,000

The actual-expense method wins for you — worth the extra recordkeeping.

Simplified method ($5/sq ft, max 300)
$750
Actual method (12.5% of expenses)
$3,000

The space must be used regularly and exclusivelyfor work — a desk in the corner of your bedroom counts, the kitchen table doesn't. The actual method has extra rules for homeowners (depreciation, later recapture) this tool doesn't model. Not tax advice.

How this is calculated

The simplified method is five dollars per square foot of office space, capped at 300 square feet — a maximum of $1,500, no receipts required. The actual method takes your real annual housing costs (rent or mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, repairs) and deducts the percentage of your home the office occupies.

Rule of thumb: renters in expensive cities usually win with the actual method, because high rent makes even a small percentage worth more than $5 a square foot. Homeowners and people with cheap housing usually take the simplified method and keep their weekend.

Formula
Actual method: home expenses × (office sq ft ÷ home sq ft)

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Common questions

The space is used for work, routinely, and for nothing else. A spare room that's an office: yes. A desk in your bedroom used only for work: yes, measure just the desk area. The kitchen table where you also eat: no. Exclusivity is the test people fail.
Absolutely, and renters often get the best results from the actual method since rent is usually the biggest number in the calculation. There's no requirement to own your home.
This fear is mostly folklore from decades ago. The deduction is routine now, especially post-2020. Claim what's real, keep a photo of the space and your expense records, and don't invent square footage.
Depreciation. You deduct a slice of your home's value each year, and when you sell, that slice gets taxed back (“recapture”). It's not a reason to avoid the method, but it is a reason homeowners should run it past a CPA once.