If you do your billing, notes, or admin from home, or you see clients there, you can usually deduct a share of your home costs. The share is based on how much of your home is your work space. There are a couple of rules that trip people up, and one HST wrinkle that depends on whether you are a physiotherapist or a massage therapist.
The home office deduction is one of the most missed write-offs for clinicians, and one of the easiest to get slightly wrong. Here is the plain version, with the parts that actually matter for a practice like yours.
Can you claim it?
You can claim a home office if either of these is true:
- Your home is where you mainly do the business side of your work, like booking, billing, charting, and admin.
- You use a space in your home regularly to see clients.
Here is the part people get wrong: renting a clinic room does not cancel this out. Plenty of practitioners pay for treatment space and still do all their paperwork at the kitchen table at night. If real business work happens at home, you have a claim.
What you can deduct
You deduct the business share of the costs of running your home:
- Rent, if you rent
- Mortgage interest, if you own (the interest only, never the principal)
- Utilities: heat, electricity, water
- Home insurance
- Property tax
- Maintenance and minor repairs
- The business share of your internet
How to size the claim
Work out what portion of your home is your work space, usually by area. If your office is 150 square feet and your home is 1,500, that is 10 percent, so you claim 10 percent of those home costs. If the room doubles as something personal, like a guest room, you also adjust for the hours it is actually used for work. Pick a method that is reasonable and keep it consistent.
Three thousand dollars off your income, every year, for space you already pay for. That is why it is worth setting up properly once and then just keeping the records.
The HST wrinkle
This is where physiotherapists and massage therapists split.
If you are a physiotherapist, your work is HST-exempt, so you cannot claim the HST back on anything, including home costs. You simply record what you paid, tax included, and deduct the business share. Clean and simple.
If you are a registered massage therapist who charges HST, you may also be able to recover some of the HST buried in the taxable home costs, like utilities, internet, and maintenance, on the business-use portion. Some home costs, like mortgage interest and property tax, do not carry HST, so they are deduction-only. It is a small split, but it is real money, and it is the kind of thing we sort out for you.
What this looks like with the rest of your deductions
Home office is one piece. It sits alongside your registration, insurance, supplies, software, and the business share of your phone and vehicle. We have the full lists for physiotherapists and for massage therapists if you want to see everything in one place. You can also see what working with us looks like on our pricing.
Frequently asked
Yes, in most cases. Paying for clinic space does not cancel a home office. If you regularly do your billing, charting, and admin from home, that home work space can still be claimed.
Take the area of your work space and divide it by the total area of your home. If the room is also used personally, adjust for the hours it is actually used for work. Apply that percentage to your home costs for the year.
You can deduct the business share of your mortgage interest, but never the principal. You can also claim the same share of property tax, home insurance, utilities, and maintenance.
Home office expenses cannot create or increase a business loss. If your claim is larger than your profit for the year, the unused amount is not lost. It carries forward and can be used in a future year.
This article is general information for Canadian health practitioners, not advice for your specific situation. What you can claim depends on your circumstances, so confirm with an accountant before you file.