Just as most audience members at a music concert go to hear the artist’s music and not a political harangue, so do WWD’s readers come here to read about web work subjects. You can provide that material without the snide political jabs that alienate some of your readers. So, my advice to you is the same I would give the aforementioned musical artists: “Shut up and sing.”

It’s also untrue that you can’t work from the kitchen or dining room. (@Imran – check out Example 4).

To make an already complicated affair even more so, the rules are totally different if you are a “sole trader” or a “limited company”.

I work as a Limited Company (it’s tax-efficient for my situation) but that means I can’t take advantage of claiming a portion of my home as a business expense.

(Deffo something you need specialist advice on!)

I’m suggesting that as governments formulate policies, communities that lead initiatives such as coworking and home-working have useful & interesting insights on working life that can help formulate better public policy. I’m saying that representing those views can help wider societal goals that will benefit more than just web workers.

@Chris Yes, many do work out of coffee shops (me included) and I’m not suggesting any kind of ‘fight the power’ militism. Simply that the experience of such workers in coffee shops, coworking communities etc is overlooked by those formulating policy. I’m leaving an open question as to whether those communities can represent themselves better so that policy *can* benefit them and others.

There are some odd rules that contribute towards the tax office deciding whether your home office is “real” or not. For example, things that will get your office excluded for tax purposes include having a sofa or TV in the office, having winter clothes stored in a cupboard in the office and so on.

One of the odd rules you have to be careful of here is that the office is not part of a corridor to another room. If your office is between the living room and a bedroom, for example, then it does not count as a business office as you are making personal use of the space when you go through the office from the living room to the bedroom.

This issue of tax deductions for home offices has always been a big issue here in Germany. Until recently it was possible for teachers to claim for a home office as they took work home to mark. That has now been stopped as the home office has to be the centre point of your work. That is not the case for teachers, who of course spend most of their time at school.

It was also interesting there was a big debate between the tax office and judges who traditionally spent much time at home working on writing the verdicts on their cases. This raised the question of where the “middle point” of their work was …

So, it is not just the UK that has some strange ideas about what “working from home” means.

Collectivism is all about the Government forcing ONE way of life, power by the many over the individual. The individual means NOTHING to the collective, except someone to collect taxes and labor from.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao – they were collectivists who murdered millions, if not billions of people.

Are you sure you want to join that gang?