The IRS rules for deducting the cost of a home office are very picky. The home office space has to be a strictly segregated room exclusively for work use with no co-mingling with personal stuff or activities whatsoever. There have been cases where IRS audits have denied the office deduction because kids toys were seen stored there or a treadmill was seen in the same room.
Next you have to take the square footage of the home divided by the entire dwelling as a percentage, and work out a 40 year depreciation schedule and base your home office tax deduction on that. Later you must track and adjust the cost basis of your home for when you sell it by subtracting your accumulated depreciation for capital gains taxes.
The IRS basically tries to make it as painful as possible.
That’s part of why I believe there will be some move toward working from home, but it won’t be nearly as dramatic as a lot of people think. There is a reason only a small minority of employees worked from home full-time before the pandemic, and it wasn’t just bureaucratic inertia. Office space is expensive, and not many employers would waste money on it for no reason, particularly when remote working solutions have been around for years. There are a lot of downsides for both the employee and the employer, and it isn’t for everyone.