Working from home: what you can claim

If your employer requires you to work from home and you pay some of the costs yourself, you can deduct the work share of expenses like rent, electricity, heat and home internet. You need a signed Form T2200 from your employer, and you claim what you actually paid. The pandemic-era flat rate isn’t available for 2023 or later years.

Who can claim

You must meet all of these conditions:

• Your employer required you to work from home. It needn’t be in your contract; a written or verbal agreement is enough, and a formal telework arrangement you chose to enter counts as a requirement.
• You mainly worked from home, or you meet people there. Either you worked from home more than 50% of the time for at least four weeks in a row, or the space is used only for your job and regularly for in-person meetings with clients, customers or others.
• You had to pay the expenses yourself, and they’re used directly in your work.
• Your employer completed and signed Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment.

You can’t claim anything your employer reimbursed or will reimburse, and only costs from the periods you qualified count: if you worked from home until July and then went back to the office full-time, only the at-home months count.

If you’re self-employed, different rules apply; see What can I deduct as a self-employed person?

What you can claim

If you sell goods or negotiate contracts on commission (usually shown in box 42 of your T4), you can claim a few costs salaried employees can’t.

Work-space expense	Salaried	Commission
Electricity, heat and water	Yes	Yes
Utilities part of condo fees	Yes	Yes
Monthly home internet access fees	Yes	Yes
Maintenance and minor repairs	Yes	Yes
Rent for the home you live in	Yes	Yes
Home insurance and property taxes	No	Yes
Leasing a computer, cell phone or similar	No	Yes
Mortgage interest or principal	No	No
Furniture, renovations and other capital costs	No	No

A commission employee’s leased equipment has to reasonably relate to earning commission income. If you own your home, you can’t claim a rental value for your office.

If your employer requires you to pay for them, you may also be able to claim:

• Office supplies used up directly in your work, such as paper, pens, ink, toner and postage. Buying equipment such as computers, monitors, desks, chairs, headsets or software can’t be claimed.
• Phone costs: long-distance calls for work, and the work share of a cell phone plan if the plan is reasonable, the cost is reasonably split between work and personal use, and you can show the minutes or data you used for work. Buying a phone, or the basic monthly rate for a landline, can’t be claimed.

If you and your spouse or partner both qualify, each expense can be claimed only once; you decide how to share it.

Working out the work share

You claim only the employment share of each expense.

1. Size of the work space. Divide its area by the finished area of your whole home (hallways, bathrooms and the kitchen count). A 15 m² room in a 150 m² home is 10%.
2. A room used only for work. That percentage is your work share, however many hours you work there.
3. A shared space, such as the kitchen table. Multiply the percentage by the share of the week’s 168 hours you use it for work. Working there 42 hours a week is 25% of the week, so an area that’s 8% of your home gives a work share of 2%.
4. Apply the work share to the eligible costs you paid during the period you qualified.

Your work-space costs can’t create or increase a loss from employment. If you can’t claim all of them this year, you can carry the rest forward to next year, as long as you’re reporting income from the same employer.

How to claim

1. Ask your employer to complete and sign Form T2200. Keep it; you don’t send it with your return.
2. Fill out Form T777, Statement of Employment Expenses, and enter the total on your return as other employment expenses (line 22900). The T777 is filed with your return.
3. Keep the T2200 and all your receipts and records for six years, in case the CRA reviews your claim.

The deduction reduces the income you pay tax on, so what it saves depends on your tax rate; try the income tax calculator.

If you live in Quebec

To deduct employment expenses on your Quebec return as well, your employer must complete Revenu Québec’s Form TP-64.3-V, General Employment Conditions. It’s a separate form from the federal T2200, so ask for both.

In short

• You must be required to work from home (a formal telework agreement counts) and meet the more-than-50% test or the client-meetings test.
• Get a signed T2200 and claim the work share of what you actually paid.
• Salaried employees can’t claim mortgage interest, property taxes, home insurance or furniture.