Depreciating Your Home: Home Office Deductions (2025 IRS Guide)

This guide covers “Depreciating Your Home” within home office deductions. The following material presents the IRS treatment of this topic, including the qualifications, exceptions, and examples in the source section. Read the rules alongside the facts of your own situation before deciding what to report, deduct, or document.

Adapted from Publication 587 (2025), Business Use of Your Home, published by the Internal Revenue Service. This guide retains the source edition’s years, amounts, deadlines, and examples. It is guidance for that edition, not a statement that the same figures apply to every tax year.

Context for these rules

If you do not or cannot elect to use the simplified method for a home, you will figure your deduction for that home using your actual expenses. You will also need to figure the percentage of your home used for business and the limit on the deduction.

If you are a partner or you use your home in your farming business and you file Schedule F (Form 1040), you can use the Worksheet To Figure the Deduction for Business Use of Your Home, near the end of this publication, to help you figure your deduction. If you use your home in a trade or business and you file Schedule C (Form 1040), you will use Form 8829 to figure your deduction.

Depreciating Your Home

If you own your home and qualify to deduct expenses for its business use, you can claim a deduction for depreciation. Depreciation is an allowance for the wear and tear on the part of your home used for business. You cannot depreciate the cost or value of the land. You recover its cost when you sell or otherwise dispose of the property.

Before you figure your depreciation deduction, you need to know the following information.

• The month and year you started using your home for business.

• The adjusted basis and fair market value of your home (excluding land) at the time you began using it for business.

• The cost of any improvements before and after you began using the property for business.

• The percentage of your home used for business. See Business Percentage, later.

Adjusted basis defined.

The adjusted basis of your home is generally its cost, plus the cost of any permanent improvements you made to it, minus any casualty losses or depreciation deducted in earlier tax years. For a discussion of adjusted basis, see Pub. 551.

Permanent improvements.

A permanent improvement increases the value of property, adds to its life, or gives it a new or different use. Examples of improvements are replacing electric wiring or plumbing, adding a new roof or addition, paneling, or remodeling.

You must carefully distinguish between repairs and improvements. See Repairs, earlier, under Actual Expenses. You must also keep accurate records of these expenses. These records will help you decide whether an expense is a deductible or a capital (added to the basis) expense. However, if you make repairs as part of an extensive remodeling or restoration of your home, the entire job is an improvement.

Example.

You buy an older home and fix up two rooms as a beauty salon. You patch the plaster on the ceilings and walls, paint, repair the floor, install an outside door, and install new wiring, plumbing, and other equipment. Normally, the patching, painting, and floor work are repairs and the other expenses are permanent improvements. However, because the work gives your property a new use, the entire remodeling job is a permanent improvement and its cost is added to the basis of the property. You cannot deduct any portion of it as a repair expense.

Adjusting for depreciation deducted in earlier years.

Decrease the basis of your property by the depreciation you deducted, or could have deducted, on your tax returns under the method of depreciation you properly selected. If you deducted less depreciation than you could have under the method you selected, decrease the basis by the amount you could have deducted under that method. If you did not deduct any depreciation, decrease the basis by the amount you could have deducted.

If you deducted more depreciation than you should have, decrease your basis by the amount you should have deducted, plus the part of the excess depreciation you deducted that actually decreased your tax liability for any year.

If you deducted the incorrect amount of depreciation, see Pub. 946.

Fair market value defined.

The fair market value of your home is the price at which the property would change hands between a buyer and a seller, neither having to buy or sell, and both having reasonable knowledge of all necessary facts. Sales of similar property, on or about the date you begin using your home for business, may be helpful in determining the property’s fair market value.

Figuring the depreciation deduction for the current year.

If you began using your home for business before 2025, continue to use the same depreciation method you used in past tax years. However, if you figured your deduction for business use of the home using the simplified method in a prior year, you will need to use the optional depreciation table for modified accelerated cost recovery system (MACRS) property. See Pub. 946 for the optional depreciation tables. For more information about the simplified method, see Revenue Procedure 2013-13, 2013-06 I.R.B. 478, available at IRS.gov/irb/2013-06_IRB#RP-2013-13.

If you began using your home for business for the first time in 2025, depreciate the business part as nonresidential real property under MACRS. Under MACRS, nonresidential real property is depreciated using the straight line method over 39 years. For more information on MACRS and other methods of depreciation, see Pub. 946.

To figure the depreciation deduction, you must first figure the part of the cost of your home that can be depreciated (depreciable basis). The depreciable basis is figured by multiplying the percentage of your home used for business by the smaller of the following.

• The adjusted basis of your home (excluding land) on the date you began using your home for business.

• The fair market value of your home (excluding land) on the date you began using your home for business.

Depreciation table.

If 2025 was the first year you used your home for business, you can figure your 2025 depreciation for the business part of your home by using the appropriate percentage from the following table.

Table 2. MACRS Percentage Table for 39-Year Nonresidential Real Property

Multiply the depreciable basis of the business part of your home by the percentage from the table for the first month you use your home for business. See Pub. 946 for the percentages for the remaining tax years of the recovery period.

Example.

In May, Frankie began to use one room at home exclusively and regularly to meet clients. This room is 8% of the square footage of the home. Frankie bought the home in 2014 for $125,000. Frankie determined from the property tax records that the adjusted basis in the house (exclusive of land) is $115,000. In May, the house had a fair market value of $165,000. Frankie multiplies the adjusted basis of $115,000 (which is less than the fair market value) by 8%. The result is $9,200, the depreciable basis for the business part of the house.

Frankie files a tax return based on the calendar year. May is the fifth month of this tax year. Frankie multiplies the depreciable basis of $9,200 by 1.605% (0.01605), the percentage from the table for the fifth month. Frankie’s depreciation deduction is $147.66.

Depreciating permanent improvements.

Add the costs of permanent improvements made before you began using your home for business to the basis of your property. Depreciate these costs as part of the cost of your home, as explained earlier. The costs of improvements made after you begin using your home for business (that affect the business part of your home, such as a new roof) are depreciated separately. Multiply the cost of the improvement by the business-use percentage and depreciate the result over the recovery period that would apply to your home if you began using it for business at the same time as the improvement. For improvements made this year, the recovery period is 39 years. For the percentage to use for the first year, see Table 2. For more information on recovery periods, see Pub. 946.

Using the guidance

Keep the documents that establish the dates, amounts, and circumstances described above. References to other chapters, forms, worksheets, or earlier and later sections refer to the linked IRS publication. Check the full publication and its updates before relying on a rule for a different tax year or a situation not addressed here.

Sources and further reading

• Publication 587 (2025), Business Use of Your Home: Figuring the Deduction — Using Actual Expenses — Depreciating Your Home — Internal Revenue Service; 2025 edition.

The cited U.S. government text is in the public domain. Source accessed October 28, 2026. Fynoptic has organized this material for educational use and is independent of, and not endorsed by, the IRS.