Rent

artisanobscure

Hi all,

Can anyone please help?

I'm a new sole trader who works from home. (Designer/Editor) I'm in a busy house share currently so I'm looking to go it alone soon to rent a city centre apartment. I'm trying to work out what I can afford... to do this I need to know what percentage I can claim for a home office.

My working week varies as I can have a week without a single project or I can have a very busy week! I'm probably averaging 30 hours a week of actual work. I freelance for a production company so I spend an hour or so of that at the clients office collecting assets. I'm hoping to get up to averaging 40 hours a week as my client list grows... I work from home using a desktop computer and laptop.

These are my options:

I'm curious to know approximately what I can claim in rent expenses before I choose an apartment and i'm finding it hard to find an answer that explains it simply.

For example, If I rent a 1 bedroom apartment for approx 800 euros and set up my office in a corner of the living room or bedroom (probably taking up a third of the room) what would I be eligible to claim in this scenario?

Likewise if I decide to pay that little bit extra to try find a 2 bed apartment for maybe 900 euro so that I can use the second room as a dedicated office, what would I be eligible to claim?

I'm new to all this and rather confused I admit! Does anyone have a clear breakdown of the 'percentage' and 'floor space' etc?

Likewise with electricity and internet, the internet will be for work purposes.

srsly78

Get an accountant, they will do your books and answer questions about expenses.

Not allowed to give advice on this forum, but all the regulations are here: http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/employee-expenses.html

artisanobscure

Hi there,

Thanks for taking the time out to post a reply. I'll be contacting an account in the next few weeks for my books but it was more just if there was a fact sheet existing online which had the breakdown? Surely something like that exists?

Something like 'x' amount of 'floorspace' 'minus' total of rooms and if it includes bathroom/kitchen etc

Hope that makes sense!

srsly78

The information you want is in the link provided. May require some digging, this is the official revenue guidelines.

Alternatively you could just ring up the tax office and ask them. We are not allowed to actually give advice on this forum (for liability reasons), we can just tell you to get an accountant and point you at the revenue webpage.

artisanobscure

Hi there,

Thanks again for your response, I probably posted in the wrong forum - i'm new to all this.
I'll try posting it in another in the meantime and will ring around tomorrow like you suggested. I had a look at the link sent and searched within the site also but can't find what I'm looking for - though maybe I missed it...

Thanks anyway.