Know-How Exchange : Strategy

I prefer the office in the home. Depends on the family tho. Lots of small children in a small home...not a good plan

Michael

Dear BigMoney

Lots of successful and famous and many not so successful people have worked from home or a variant of it – the garden shed or an outbuilding or even a purpose built office. The latter doesn’t count really as you could build a new office anywhere you want to – the key is to re-arranging whatever you’ve got to accommodate what it is that you want to do. The second part is discipline and the ability to keep away from the kitchen or the piano for 8 hours a day or whatever you want. How long depends on your temperament, fuse, sleep pattern and so on.

Many people find that it is important to have an office or a study away from the house – these include George Bernard Shaw and a slew of successful modern day writers. On the other hand, Lord Archer writes either from his study on the 29th floor of Archer Towers of from the old Rectory at Cambridge. I’ve seen both and the Cambridge retreat uses the same room as some famous poet or other starved to death in – hence the words starving in a garret.

Overcoming inherent obstacles is part of the process – we decided to house our servers in the cellar because it was virtually bomb proof and filled with wine at a constant temperature. Then we had to work out how to get the cabling past 4 foot thick 16th century walls without messing them up and establish modern day communications with the keep in the Eyrie tower where I wanted to be based (On a good day, you can see the next castle) There were so many problems that the action bits are still housed in a summer house on the west lawn by the river which has the advantages that England is not very summery. If I forget an umbrella, I either get soaked or I’m stuck there until it clears up.

I knew if it was a 25 pt question it was Big Money.

When I had my first home office I had 4 kids at home.

First rule-- no multi tasking. Meaning don't run a load of clothes during business hours. Still hire the babysitter.

2nd-- I put up a "closed" sign in front of the room. It was a mental barrior that "closed" is closed.

I don't do that anymore and the new hubbie would appreciate if I went back to that "closed" sign.

There are a lot of deductions for this. But at the same time the IRS really flags those returns. So a 10x10 office may not be 100SF write off, which is 1/10 of your house. I think I'm pretty smart, I needed a tax pro to compute this.

My tax pro is part of my family. When my car tanked, I called him. When I got engaged, I called him. When I wanted to move, I called him (getting the drift)-

So advice-- don't assume liability (rent) if your biz doesn't support it. Everyone's situation is different-- so get a good tax pro.

There are tax implications to home offices, both pro and con. These vary depending on what country you are in.

And there are issues related to work/home time and finding time to do the work.