Originally Posted by Snowmom:
It can be confusing.
First, you need to figure out the square footage of each room and the total square footage of your home.
Then figure out how many hours you spend working in the home (including cleaning, prepping, internet research-like this, plus working hours).
Tom explains T/S here: http://tomcopelandblog.com/how-to-ca...e-year-is-over
The formulas are all entered in Turbo Tax if you do taxes yourself- you just need the basics (sq ftg and time working).
Unless you have a good tax preparer who really knows daycare allowances, it's almost more beneficial to read up on what's allowed and do taxes yourself. I had a tax preparer who SAID she knew daycare, yet didn't deduct HALF of what I knew I was allowed. She said I owed over $5000 in 2015. I redid them myself asking Tom some questions here about my big expenses I wasn't sure of ended up only owing $400!
I understand about figuring the time part of how much I do in my house etc, but it's the square footage part that's hard for me. We have an 1800 square foot house. One bedroom 10 x 12 is used exclusively for daycare. There is 1 bathroom probably 4 X 6 that is not used at all. One of the bedrooms I'm not sure if I'm under licensing as using it, but I do have a little one sleep in a portacrib in there. Do the kids have to sleep in there or can you store things in a room and consider it part of your square footage? So when I figure out the square footage, what do I do with that and the time part? I know that my tax lady won't know how to do this because she has me at 23%, which is not right. I'm going to do it myself next year. I just bought Tom's book.