Two one story industrial buildings I’ve worked at did have a shower inside the building in the toilets. Also two industrial buildings my father worked in also had a shower, it may have been intended as a emergency chemical shower but the employess used it all the same.
And a high rise office suite building I’ve been in(that housed the regional offices of Social Security at the time) had a shower in the men’s room at least(dunno about the women’s )
In a couple areas I’ve lived the local building code actually said that all office buildings of more than mumble mumble had to have a shower. The law was passed specifically to encourage commuting via bike. A quick google shows NY City has similar laws which give the building owners some sort of credit if they have showers for bikers.
Yeah, but what if you do invite folks onto your premises while using the office as an office? Say you hang out your shingle as an attorney – or, if you don’t have a license to practice law, as a wedding planner, or a language tutor, or a website designer, or something, anything.
Sure, as it happens you don’t get a lot of walk-in business – but your front office is ready just in case anyone ever shows up looking to pay for your services as a travel agent or a yoga instructor or a private eye or whatever. You also happen to have a back room with a shower (and a little fridge, and a PC with an internet connection, and half-a-dozen other nifty little things), but that’s not illegal, right?
This is the first building I’ve worked in that doesn’t have shower facilities. (20+ years in work force - probably 8-9 buildings?) Only once did I have a privte bathroom with shower, but there’s usually some sort of gym and a shower in the basement. even my daughter’s school has that for the teachers.
That said, I’m sure if I’d ever tried it I’d have been snagged by the parking attendants. They get very interested anytime a car stays overnight.
Mixed-use areas do exist though. A dream of mine has always been to own a bookstore/cafe and live over top of it. :: sigh ::
I know someone who did this. The problem was that he couldn’t overtly say the office was his residence. He claimed he lived at his brother’s house, and that was his official residence. The landlord didn’t care as long as he had some other place that was his official residence. He put a free standing shower in the bathroom, put in a little kitchenette out in the big common area, and slept on the couch in his office. But he rarely cooked anything there, and washed his clothes at the coin-op. He did it for about 2 years, then moved in with his GF. His employees thought he was an oddball at first, but he was successful and they all did well in the end. I think it would be a good idea for a young, single entrepreneur during a start up operation.
is standing outside the cinema checking the start times
Not quite the same thing as the OP, but I knew a guy who rented a flat in town, and opened a shop elsewhere in the town. The shop had an upstairs that wasn’t being used for anything, so he thought he’d do himself a favour, and pay the rent for the shop, and live in the space above it.
The shop landlord quickly found out what he was doing, and although they didn’t have a leg to stand on, as there was nothing in the lease forbidding him doing this, they waited till he’d gone out one day, came in, and dumped a load of furniture and other household stuff upstairs so that he couldn’t use the space to live in.
Was the upstairs space defined in the lease as part of the rented space or not? If so, how could the owners put things into it? If not, how did they not have a basis for a violation?
If your office space is part of your business you can claim there are documents/valuables that need protecting and hire yourself as the night watchman.
Happens all over the place.
What I’d suggest though is getting a small 19 foot motorhome and put your company name on it across the back and use it as much as possible. You can claim it is a mobile office.
So yes you can, you just have to think it out and have the correct responses when needed.
The amount you save on taxes, utilities, insurance on a home, etc will easily offset a small motorhome even a class B style that can be driven around like a custom van.
We have a bunch of development in downtown Fresno that is specifically built with a ground floor office/shop space and an upstairs apartment. For IRS purposes it makes a pretty clear line which space is which and your commute is measured in feet. In some ways I would love such an arrangement.
For a sole prop, this would be irrelevant as the money you paid the “night watchmen” was your money anyways unless you tried to claim the night watchman is another person for schedule C purposes which will not fly under more than a cursory review by the IRS. I know of people who have invented half a dozen small businesses out of thin air trying to create deductions for services that are actually cash in pocket. Some get away with it for a while, invariably it implodes.
For a corporation its still money being paid to you. it would make no fiscal difference if you cut 5 checks for $1,000 a month or 1 for $5,000 it is all income paid to an employee which is you resulting in the same end game tax situation.
So your scam involves claiming your business needs a night watchman. How do you explain needing a bed? Because a night watchman isn’t expected to sleep on the job.
Our lease for the Taekwondo school says we can’t live in it. But the reality is that we probably could live in it and the landlord would never know. Use the gym down the street to shower, use the coin-op laundry around the corner.
But the lease conditions are going to be different.
I don’t know what the standard lease conditions are for you, but around here:
A commercial lease does not include outgoings (mostly taxes). A residential lease does.
A commercial lease can be broken on short notice. A residential lease they can’t just evict you without reason.
Also, the fire safety regulations are different for residential properties. That means many commercial premises are not “fit for habitation”, which means that they can’t recover unpaid rent if they “permit” you to live there.
In Australia if you have a development of warehouse / office spaces which is normally non residential it is legal to designate one warehouse / space in the lot as being for a caretaker to live in. In some cases people have cheaply and legally built themselves very very nice and large homes inside warehouses through this provision. They still need to meet fire standards etc The caretaker position doesn’t need to be paid and theres not really any requirements for what counts as a caretaker.
On the other hand many areas are designated dual usage. I’m currently living in a town house which is dual use and which is both office space and my home, however the pricing for it was the same as normal residential space really so it’s not a bargain. In this case the lease is in my company name and I pay my company a portion to rent my living space off my company (sub letting). All with the approval of the owner, wouldn’t be worth the risk otherwise.
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