Home Office vs Home Business

What is a Home Office?

At its most basic level a home office is just a space in the house which is called the "office". It could be in a closet, beside the furnace, in a garage or in a spare bedroom. In larger homes, it could be a separate room on the main floor next to the kitchen or family room. My home home office started this way but now occupies most of our basement. Most home offices are simply places where on goes to pay the household bills or surf the internet: not much real business happins.

Work from Home

This is a much more business oriented office that probably relates to one major employer. Enlightened companies allow some of their employees to work at home at least some of the time. This can free the employee from a commute and allow he or she to coordinate family events easier. Computers, the internet, the telephone and the fax machine make this all possible and with the advent of video conferencing, the need to be in an actual office to meet with someone is not really necessary. The way gas prices are going, this may be the way of the future for any corporations who want to attract top level specialists. In this scenerio, there is still an employee-employer relationship.

Self Employed Home Office

This is where the person is basically working for himself or herself but there is one major source of income. This would include insurance agents and real estate agents. These agents are not employees and they pay all or part of their own expenses. Being self employed, they can make business deductions for space in their house, car expenses and other office expenses like paper, telephones, internet service and a host of other expenses that you incur when you run a small business.

Home Office Business

This a small business where the person actually owns the business name, has a separate business bank account and writes cheques on the business bank account. The business could deal directly with customers or clients or deal direct with other businesses. This could be an independant real estate broker, insurance broker, hairdresser, plumber, electrician etc. Network marketers would fit in this catagory.