If you use said office for anything other than trading (even rarely) then you cannot take the home office deduction therefore it follows that they would not expect every professional trader to take the deduction.
And a bath tub too!!!!! A bath tub is very important to help generate trading ideas. Why just yesterday I was thinking about Bofa in the tub.
that is FUNNY...but you know what, that is the kind of stuff Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco International infamy was writing off years ago.... I mean he was outrageous. Now in jail of course.
Enrolled Agent is right. Another CPA poster is right. icarus is wrong, no wonder he was paid $4.10 per hour. (by the way either EA, CPA or an Attorney can represent clients in court). I wouldn't diss an Enrolled Agent, most of them know much more than any JD. In SoCal many people pay 3-4K monthly mortgage plus $200-300 in utilities. Those that can afford to pay 40K for the house are usually in 25% tax bracket. That is at least $100 per month or $3 per day or 0.12c per hour, or $1,200 per year. But what do I know I am just a CPA
it don't mean anything when you are making $1200 a day, but come March and you see how much they are trying to get from you, it is just like trading and you start looking for any edge you can find. The guy who taught me said, "Take a look in your bank book and see how much you want to pay and write that on the bottom line and then just start working your way back until it is legal."
many northerners who are obviously conventionally educated will drop the "ing" in an attempt to sound colloquial. But if you spend anytime down in Mississippi where many descendants of former slaves learned English from their ancestors who learned it as a second language almost always attach the "ing" rather than dropping it.
Like my father who was an English Major was always trying to tell me I didn't speak correctly and I told him it may be correct where you live but out here if I talk like you nobody will know what I'm talking about. Like the first time I proudly announced to some oldtimers at the bait shop that I had caught several Bluegills. They discussed it a moment and the interpreter told them I had caught a mess of Bluegill.
So what really is a home office? If you are a tight butt suburban IRS agent it may be a separate room in your highly mortgaged neighborhood where kids are not allowed to play. For me it might be a card table set up under a sugar maple. Now why don't you just give it to me and tell me to eat it because the only opinion that matters is yours.
This is all petty BS when compared to the shenanigans the big corporate boys get away with. Pity our stupid IRS is out-gunned by their smarter tax attorneys.