Employment Expense Calculator (T777 / T2200) Canada

What the employment expense calculator does

The calculator works out how much of the cost of doing your job can come off your own tax return. It takes the size of your work space, the hours you spend there, the kilometres on your car, the supplies you used and whether your employer signed a T2200, and returns the line 22900 deduction and what it is worth in tax.

Employees are treated much more strictly than the self-employed. A contractor deducts what the business needed; an employee deducts only what a signed T2200 says the employment contract required them to pay, from a list the Income Tax Act defines narrowly. The calculator follows that list.

A worked example

With the default inputs, a salaried Ontario employee earning $85,000 works 40 hours a week in a 120 sq ft space in a 1,200 sq ft home, with $9,600 of rent and utilities, drives 12,000 of 20,000 km for work with $7,200 of vehicle costs, and uses $600 of supplies. The home office claim is about $229 (a 10% area share narrowed to 2.38% by hours), the vehicle claim $4,320 (60%), and supplies $600, for a deduction of about $5,149. At a 29.65% marginal rate it saves about $1,527 of tax.

The T2200 comes first

Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment, is signed by the employer and kept by the employee. It states that you had to work away from the office, pay for supplies or use your own vehicle, and that you were not reimbursed. You do not file it, but you must produce it if the CRA asks, and it does ask.

Without that signature nothing on the list survives review, so the calculator sets the deduction to zero when the box is unticked while still showing what the claim would be worth, which is useful when asking an employer to sign.

If your employer already paid you a non-taxable allowance for kilometres or a phone, that part of the cost is not yours to deduct. Enter only what you actually paid.

The two tests on the work space

The first test is space: the area you work in divided by the total finished area of the home, in the same unit on both sides. Mixing square feet and square metres is the most common way a claim ends up far too large.

The second test is time, which applies when the space is also used as part of the home. A room used only for work counts at the full area share, so enter 168 hours. A dining table used as a desk from nine to five counts only for the hours you work there, so the area share is reduced by hours worked divided by 168. Forty hours out of 168 turns a 10% area share into about 2.4%. That is why a dedicated office is worth several times a corner of the kitchen, and it is the first thing an auditor recalculates.

Which home costs count

• Rent, if you rent
• Heat, electricity and water
• Minor maintenance and repairs

Commission employees can add a share of home insurance and property tax. Nobody can claim mortgage interest, mortgage principal or capital cost allowance on the home; depreciation on a principal residence would also take part of the eventual sale gain outside the principal residence exemption.

Vehicle costs are actual, not per kilometre

There is no flat per-kilometre deduction for employees. The CRA’s per-kilometre figures are the limits on what an employer can pay you tax-free, a different rule. An employee totals the real cost of running the vehicle for the year and claims the business share.

Real cost means fuel, insurance, licence and registration, maintenance and repairs, and loan interest or lease payments, each subject to its own limits. The business share is business kilometres divided by total kilometres. Travel between home and your regular workplace is commuting and personal, however early the start or long the drive. Travel from the office to a client, or from home to a client when you have no regular workplace, is business.

Keep a logbook: a full year at first, then a representative three-month sample in later years, which is what the CRA accepts.

Supplies, and what does not count

Supplies are things used up doing the job: paper, ink, stamps, stationery, long-distance charges and the work share of a cell phone plan. A laptop, desk, chair or filing cabinet is capital, and employees cannot claim capital cost allowance on it, so furniture bought for a home office is not deductible however necessary it was. A basic home internet connection’s monthly charge is generally outside the list for salaried employees. The calculator takes whatever you enter, so keep the number defensible.

Salaried route versus commission route

On the commission route, home insurance, property tax, advertising, promotion and the deductible half of meals and entertainment are allowed, but the total cannot exceed the year’s commission income. The salaried route has a shorter list and no commission ceiling. A commission employee can take whichever gives the larger deduction, and the calculator reports both. A salesperson with modest commissions and heavy car use often does better on the salaried route, because the commission ceiling bites before the extra categories help.

Either way, the claim cannot exceed employment income or create an employment loss that shelters other income.

What the deduction is worth

A deduction removes income from the top of your stack, so it is worth your marginal rate. The calculator runs the federal and provincial brackets on your employment income with and without the claim and reports the difference. For Quebec residents the federal abatement makes the federal half of the saving slightly smaller. A claim that straddles a bracket boundary is worth a blend of the two rates.

Getting it filed

The claim goes on form T777, Statement of Employment Expenses, and the total on line 22900. Keep the T2200, the logbook, the measurements, utility bills and receipts for six years; none of it is filed, but all of it can be requested.

Every figure here is an estimate based on your numbers and current published rates, not tax advice. Check the result against your T2200 and receipts, or with an accountant, before you file.

About This Employment Expense Calculator

Use this employment expense calculator to get an instant, accurate estimate. The figures follow official CRA guidance and every rate and threshold is kept up to date for 2026. Adjust the inputs above to match your situation, or browse all our calculators to plan your next step.