Taxes 2020: Do home office purchases qualify for deductions?

CHICAGO (WLS) -- If you're working from home because of the pandemic, you may have had to buy items to create a home office.

From desks and chairs, to printers and ink, many people have been hoping home office items would qualify for a tax deduction.

But tax expert Chad Elkins says for many people, that will not be possible.

"Unfortunately, tax reform from a couple of years go eliminated this as a possibility," Elkins said. "So now, the only way you can write off home office expenses such as a computer, a printer, internet and things like that, is if you're self-employed...I do think that after this tax season, it's going to be re-evaluated and if we're still mainly working from home in 2022, which is a possibility, I do think that they're going to have to allow some deductions for this."

Elkins said you should still save all of your receipts for home office expenses that you purchase this year, because it's possible that the IRS could allow some of those deductions next year in 2022, depending on if the law changes.