Home office questionnaire: use tests, square footage and home expenses

By Arthur Teboul, DokuTrak · Published November 5, 2026

In brief

A home office questionnaire checks whether a client’s workspace qualifies for the home office deduction, then gathers the square footage, the method and the home expenses behind it. It follows IRS Publication 587 in order: who uses the space, how it is used, how big it is, and what the home cost to run.

Request these documents with DokuTrak14-day free trial, no card. Add one only to keep going.

The organizer: Home office questionnaire

Fill in one questionnaire for each office in the home. If one office serves two businesses, repeat the use questions for each business.

Who uses the space

Based on: Publication 587, decision chart

Do you use the space for your own business, as a sole proprietor, partner or farmer?If yes, send: Name of the business the office serves
Do you use the space only as an employee of someone else?
Do you own the home?If yes, send: Form 1098 for each mortgage; Property tax bill
Do you rent the home?If yes, send: Lease; Rent paid for the year

How the space is used

Based on: Publication 587, exclusive use and regular use tests

Is the space used for the business and for nothing else?
Days per week the space is used for business
Do you do your billing, bookkeeping, scheduling or ordering there, with no other fixed office for that work?
Do you meet clients, patients or customers there?If yes, send: Appointment calendar showing visits
Is the space a separate building, such as a studio, workshop or garage?
Do you store inventory or product samples there, with no other fixed business location?If yes, send: Description of the storage area
Do you run a daycare in the home?If yes, send: State daycare license; Hours of daycare use

Size and dates

Based on: Simplified option; Publication 587, part-year use

Square feet of the office
Square feet of the whole home
Date you began using the office, if it was during the year
Did the office change size, or did you move, during the year?If yes, send: Dates and square feet for each period
Method you prefer: simplified or regular (Form 8829)
Did you claim a home office last year?If yes, send: Last year’s Form 8829 or simplified method worksheet

Home expenses (regular method)(if it applies)

Based on: Form 8829; Publication 587, direct and indirect expenses

Mortgage interest and real estate taxes for the year
Rent paid for the year
Homeowners or renters insurance premiums
Electricity, gas, water, trash and internet bills
HOA dues and security system costs
Did you pay for repairs or painting in the office only?If yes, send: Invoices marked as office-only work
Did you pay for repairs to the whole home, such as the furnace or roof?If yes, send: Invoices for each repair
Gross income of the business, and its expenses unrelated to the home

Depreciation and sale (owners, regular method)(if it applies)

Based on: Publication 587, depreciation and sale of the home

Date you bought the home and the purchase price
Value of the land, from the property tax bill or appraisal
Have you made improvements to the home since you bought it?If yes, send: Invoices with dates for each improvement
Have you taken home office depreciation in earlier years?If yes, send: Prior Forms 8829 or depreciation schedules
Do you plan to sell the home in the next few years?

Who the questionnaire screens out first

The first question is not about the room. It is about the person. In the decision chart of Publication 587, someone using part of the home as an employee reaches “no deduction” before any other test is asked (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). A salaried client who works from home two days a week stops there.

The deduction is for a trade or business. Publication 587 refuses it when the home serves a profit-seeking activity that is not a trade or business (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Sole proprietors figure the regular method on Form 8829, which feeds Schedule C (IRS, About Form 8829, Expenses for Business Use of Your Home). Partners and farmers who file Schedule F use the worksheets in Publication 587 instead (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).

This questionnaire handles the home office alone. The business itself belongs in the self-employed organizer, and the rest of the return in the individual tax organizer.

Regular use, exclusive use and the two exceptions

The exclusive use test is met only when a specific area of the home serves the business and nothing else (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The area can be a room or another separately identifiable space, and it does not need a permanent partition (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). A desk in the guest room that also hosts visitors fails the test.

The regular use test is a separate question about frequency. Incidental or occasional business use is not regular use, and all the facts count (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). That is why the questionnaire asks how many days a week the space is used, not just whether it exists.

Two situations skip the exclusive use test. One is space used regularly for daycare, covered on its own daycare organizer (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The other is storage of inventory or product samples, which comes with conditions of its own (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).

You sell products at wholesale or retail as your trade or business (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).
You keep the inventory or samples at home for use in that business (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).
Your home is the only fixed location of the business (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).
You use the storage space on a regular basis, and it is a separately identifiable space suitable for storage (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).

Principal place of business, client meetings and separate structures

Passing the use tests is not enough. The space must also fit one of the qualifying uses, and the questionnaire asks about each one in turn. The table lists them with the question that checks each.

Administrative work is where many home offices qualify. Billing clients, keeping books, ordering supplies and setting appointments are examples Publication 587 gives (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Doing some of that work in a car or a hotel room, or hiring a firm to do the billing elsewhere, does not disqualify the home office (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).

When one office serves two businesses, the principal place of business question is answered separately for each one (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The questionnaire therefore repeats the use block for each business that shares the room.

Qualifying use	Question to ask	Rule
Principal place of business	Do you do the administrative or management work here, with no other fixed location where you do much of it?	Publication 587 (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home)
Place to meet clients	Do you meet patients, clients or customers here in the normal course of business?	Publication 587 (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home)
Separate structure	Is the space a free-standing studio, workshop, garage or barn used only for the business?	Publication 587 (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home)
Storage	Is the space where you keep inventory or product samples, at your only fixed business location?	Publication 587 (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home)

Square feet, months of use and the method

The simplified option allows $5 per square foot of the home used for business, on up to 300 square feet (IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction). It takes no depreciation for the home, so there is nothing to recapture later for those years (IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction). The regular method uses the business share of real costs and does include depreciation (IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction).

Dates matter as much as the size. If the office was used for only part of the year, or its size changed, the simplified deduction is limited to the average monthly allowable square footage (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). A month with less than 15 days of qualified use counts as zero (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The questionnaire asks for the start date and any change in size.

Switching methods has a cost in paperwork. A client who used the simplified method one year and the regular method later figures later depreciation with the optional tables (IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction). A carryover of actual expenses from an earlier regular-method year cannot be deducted in a simplified year (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).

Direct and indirect expenses, and the income limit

For the regular method, the questionnaire sorts each bill into one of two columns. Direct expenses are the costs that benefit only the business part of the home, such as painting the office (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Indirect expenses are the costs that benefit the entire home, such as utilities, insurance and general repairs (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Only the business share of indirect costs counts.

The deduction is capped by the business itself. It cannot exceed the gross income from the business use of the home, minus the business deductions that have nothing to do with the home (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Costs above that limit carry over to the next year you use actual expenses (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The questionnaire asks for last year’s Form 8829 so the carryover is not lost.

Depreciation and a later sale of the home

Depreciation now affects the sale later. If you were entitled to depreciate the business part of your home, you cannot exclude the part of the gain equal to depreciation for periods after May 6, 1997 (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The words “or could have deducted” matter: depreciation you never claimed can still reduce the exclusion (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home).

So an owner using the regular method is asked for the purchase date and price, the land value, improvements since the purchase, and depreciation already taken. A renter skips this block and sends the lease instead.

Questions people ask

Can W-2 employees take the home office deduction?

In the Publication 587 decision chart, using part of your home as an employee leads straight to no deduction (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). The deduction is built for people with a trade or business of their own.

What does regular and exclusive use mean?

Exclusive use means a specific area serves only the business (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Regular use means the business use is more than incidental or occasional (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Both must be true, apart from the daycare and inventory storage exceptions.

How much is the simplified home office deduction?

The simplified option uses $5 per square foot of business space, for up to 300 square feet (IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction). It replaces the home expense calculation and takes no depreciation for the home (IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction).

What happens to home office depreciation when I sell the house?

You cannot exclude the part of the gain equal to depreciation you deducted, or could have deducted, for periods after May 6, 1997 (IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home). Keep the Form 8829 or worksheet for every year you claimed the office.

Sources

IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home: The employee and business-use tests, exclusive and regular use, daycare and storage exceptions, principal place of business, separate structures, part-year use, direct and indirect expenses, the gross income limit, carryovers and depreciation after May 6, 1997.
IRS, Simplified option for home office deduction: The $5 per square foot rate on up to 300 square feet, no depreciation or recapture, and depreciation after switching back to the regular method.
IRS, About Form 8829, Expenses for Business Use of Your Home: Form 8829 figures the allowable home expenses for Schedule C and the carryover of amounts not deductible this year.

About the author

Arthur Teboul (Founder, DokuTrak) is building DokuTrak after watching professionals lose hours chasing clients for documents over email. Arthur Teboul.

Editorial standards

How this page was made (methodology): it is built from the primary sources listed under Sources, and every rule and figure on it links to the source it comes from. Last updated October 25, 2026. Spotted an error or a rule that changed? Contact us.

Ask once. DokuTrak does the chasing.

Your client uploads from one link, with no account and no password.
Reminders go out on a schedule, by default 2, 5, 10 and 14 days after the request, until the file arrives.
With AI review switched on in your workspace (it is off by default), each upload gets a first pass that flags a file that is not the requested document or an unreadable or blurry scan. It says so when it is not sure.
You accept every file or mark it for re-upload, and your client gets the note by email. The AI never accepts a file.

Request these documents with DokuTrak14-day free trial, no card. Add one only to keep going.