Porch as home office

[Dave Friedman]

Hi, all.

I can't find an answer to this anywhere--not just on BP, but by a wider Google--and would be grateful for any insight.

We own/live in a 2nd-floor condo, and have a large balcony that we don't use for anything. (We used to grill, but that got outlawed for our kind of setup. :-( ) But if we did use it for something--like a home office!--we could pretty much use it year-round. We're in a part of CA where the weather is pretty much always good enough to be outdoors, and it only rains a few days out of the year. (You may have heard about our drought.)

Can you think of a reason why we couldn't use this as a home office? I can't find anything in the IRS pubs about "it's gotta have a proper roof".

Thanks!

[Taylor Brugna]

Dave Friedman No way that space would support "regular and exclusive use" and a "principal place of business". I know it's California, but I think that's a stretch.