Originally Posted by TomCopeland:
Absolutely not! First, you can't automatically claim an hour before and an hour after unless you are actually doing business work during that time. Second, you can claim all hours working in your home when children are not present, even if it's on the weekends or evenings. You should be carefully tracking all of these hours for at least 2 months on a calendar and using the average of these 2 months for the rest of the year. The average number of hours providers work after children are gone is about 14 hours a week. See my article:http://tomcopelandblog.com/the-singl...uce-your-taxes
Sorry I should have been clearer. She told me you can't claim any of this. I work all the time as i'm sure we all do. But she's only allowed me to do an hour before and an hour after. I easily do 15 hours without kids in my home a week.