Tag Archives: Tax savings

4 Cost Segregation Considerations For Residential Investors

18 Jan

Real estate is one of the best tax strategies out there, but many landlords, don’t, know how to maximize their deductions and minimize their taxes. Let’s look at four things you need to know on how you can use cost segregation studies to boost your deductions.

1. Cost Segregation Defined

A cost segregation study is the practice of allocating the cost basis of property to various components of your rental real estate, so instead of allocating 100 % of the value to building and land a cost segregation study allows us to segregate, or divide the cost basis between personal property, land improvements, building and land.

That means that when we’re done with a cost segregation study, we’re gonna have value allocated to five year, seven year, fifteen year and twenty seven and a half year property, rather than allocating all of our value only to twenty seven and a half-year property. The results of this allocation mean that we will be able to depreciate components over a faster time period. Depreciating parts of the building faster generates large, non-cash, expenses and reduces taxes.

2. Bonus Depreciation

The second tip is that we can use 100 % bonus depreciation for any component with a useful life of less than twenty years. That cost segregation study that we went through allowed us to allocate value to components with a useful life of five, seven fifteen and twenty seven and a half years.

The nice thing about bonus depreciation is that the value that we allocated to the five seven and fifteen year property can be 100 % expensed in the first year. Assuming that we do the cost segregation study in the first year of ownership, this bonus depreciation will result in writing off about 20 to 30 percent of the purchase price of your real estate in the first year. Even if it is not done in the first year of ownership, as long as the property was purchased after September of 2017, we can go back and get the benefit for past years without amending tax returns. This can result in large passive losses that you may be able to claim on your personal tax returns.

3. Passive Vs Active Losses

The third tip is that the amount of passive losses that you can take on your personal tax returns depends on several things:

If You Qualify As an Active Real Estate Professional

If you qualify as an active real estate professional, your losses are not considered passive, and may be used to offset your total income. To qualify as an active Real Estate Professional, you must:

  • provide more than one-half of his or her total personal services in real property trades or businesses in which he or she materially participates
  • perform more than 750 hours of services during the tax year in real property trades or businesses, with contemporaneous time logs that detail the services rendered.
  • materially participate in each rental property, unless the you make an election to treat all interests in rental real estate as a single rental real estate activity.

These rules are far more complicated than we can address here. Be very careful in determining your status as a real estate professional, and consult with your tax professional or someone well-versed in the qualification process.

If You Don’t Qualify as an Active Real Estate Professional

If you don’t qualify as an active real estate professional, your loss is considered passive. Under the passive activity rules you can deduct up to $25,000 in passive losses against your ordinary income (W-2 wages) if your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is $100,000 or less. This deduction phases out $1 for every $2 of MAGI above $100,000 until $150,000 when it is completely phased out. If you cannot utilize the passive losses due to the passive loss restrictions, you can carry the loss forward and utilized in future years.

4. You Don’t Have to Wonder If This Is Right For You

You can find out quickly and easily if a cost segregation study would benefit you and your properties specifically. Click here to get a FREE preliminary analysis of your property or properties. Please put my name, David Wiener, in the “How Did Yo Hear About Us” box. This FREE analysis will show you what an engineering-based (best method) cost segregation study, done by the premier provider in the United States, would cost and the estimated tax benefit you would realize. I’ll be happy to review the analysis with you, as well as answer your questions about the Real Estate Professional designation and your situation.

Contact Me Directly

Please subscribe to this blog , or contact me with any questions.

Call me directly at 770-224-8504 or 888-780-1333
Schedule a phone call with me by clicking here
Visit my website by clicking here
Visit my YouTube channel by clicking here
Email me at David.wiener@cashflowstrategies.us

Bonus Depreciation – Tax-Saving Tool for Your Business

14 Oct

Bonus depreciation is a valuable tax-saving tool for businesses. It allows your business to take an immediate first-year deduction of 100% deduction on the purchase or renovation of eligible business property.

Depreciation of a building would normally be spread out over the life of the asset

What is Depreciation?

Depreciation allows (or requires) businesses to spread out the cost of long-term assets over the life of the asset. The alternative would be to take the cost of the asset in the first year after the asset is acquired by the business, but this isn’t realistic. The most common way to depreciate a business asset is by spreading out the cost evenly over the asset life – called straight-line depreciation. Increasing in popularity, especially with the new Tangible Property Regulations, is the Cost Segregation Method or Accelerated Depreciation.

Accelerated Depreciation  allows you an additional deduction of 100% of the cost of qualifying property

What is Bonus Depreciation?

Bonus depreciation is a method of accelerated depreciation which allows a business to make an additional deduction of 100% (this was 50% prior to the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed last month) of the cost of qualifying property in the year in which it is put into service.  Bonus depreciation can be applied to any new asset with a 20 year life or less.  This includes land improvements which are not considered personal property.

  • The 50% Bonus Depreciation rate is increased to 100% for qualified property acquired or built after September 27, 2017.
  • Bonus Depreciation has been expanded to apply to both newly constructed buildings and used property purchased and acquired after September 27, 2017. Bonus eligible property must have a depreciable life of 20 years or less.
  • Qualified Leasehold Improvements, Qualified Retail Improvements, and Qualified Restaurant Property are all replaced with Qualified Improvement Property (QIP), which has a 15-year recovery period and is eligible for 100% bonus (restaurants now have a class life of 39 years).
  • Structural items like interior supporting framing, escalators, and elevators are not included in QIP. The improvements must have begun at least one day after the building was put in service for its intended use.
  • Items removed, discarded, or abandoned have value that should be removed from the depreciation schedule and identified as a partial asset disposition (PAD). This must be done in the same tax year as the removal or the tax payer loses the ability to capture the write down.

Contact me directly

If you own commercial or income property and have not had a conversation with a trusted cost segregation provider, don’t wait. Contact me today for a free estimate of the tax benefits you may be missing.

Call me at 770-224-8504 or 888-780-1333
Email me by clicking here
Visit my website by clicking here
Visit my Youtube channel by clicking here
Learn more about Cost Segregation by clicking here
See my blog post on The Tangible Property Regulations
See my blog post on How To Select a Cost Segregation Firm

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