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Can I legally claim work I do on home improvement on my taxes?

country girl1 asked:


We made many home improvements ourselves. Can I claim an hourly rate on the work i did myself?

Tags: Home Improvement, Hourly Rate, Taxes

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 2:43 am and is filed under United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Can I legally claim work I do on home improvement on my taxes?”

1. Brian G says:

   November 30, 2008 at 7:30 am

   No. The work you pay for someone else to do would be added into the cost basis of the house when you sell it, reducing your taxes if you owe any on the sale. If you do it yourself, only the cost of materials are added to the cost basis. You are expected to maintain your own home.
2. wildraft1 says:

   November 30, 2008 at 1:45 pm

   No.
3. hometech02 says:

   December 2, 2008 at 1:34 pm

   so write a bill up for joeblow company and file it away with your other papers. I aint gonna tell. can they prove you didnt pay him in cash.. can they prove you didnt pay him labor and you bought material? cuz thats what you did…
   not the answer you wanted to hear but it happens.
4. Judy says:

   December 3, 2008 at 12:42 am

   Uh….no you can’t. You couldn’t even claim your time if you were doing it for a charity, and certainly can’t claim it for work you do for yourself.

   Can I claim the time I spend doing laundry or vacuuming? Think about it……