MARK KOHLERMain Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, LLC · Owner at Main Street Professionals, LLC

Standard Deduction or Simplified Method? How to Write Off a Home Office

24 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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Mark Kohler explains two ways to deduct a home office: the traditional method based on your home's square footage, or the simplified method at $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet for a maximum of $1,500. He covers the paperwork involved and how each approach affects your automatic deductions.

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Once I have that home office space, then I have to decide how am I going to write that off. There's the traditional method where I come up with the square footage of that space proportional to the whole apartment or home, and then I take a percentage of utility bills, property taxes, mortgage interest, and yada yada. That's the standard deduction. Kind of a pain in the butt. And you have to do this worksheet, blah blah blah. But if I have this space defined by square footage, I can do the simplified method can write off $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet, which equates to a maximum deduction of $1,500 a year. Now, again, that doesn't sound like a lot, but it unlocks the auto deduction.