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💸 Taxes

ℹ️ Make sure to fight your property taxes every year, try out this software for free

Accounting Tips

💸 Tax credit of 10k means that you remove 10k from your taxes owed. Taxable income write-off of 10k means that you remove 10k from your taxable income, which is usually less than a tax credit.

  1. Open a separate bank account for each of your real estate properties (personal checking or business account if you have an LLC) for rental income to come in
  2. Keep a separate debit/credit card specifically for that real estate property expenses to be paid by the new real estate bank account
  3. Keep receipts and write the reason you have a receipt (for example, “business dinner with Nelson L”). Check out Stessa.com on Software
  4. Start your tax time early. Hire a CPA, or use TurboTax.
  5. Maintain records for as long as you keep the property (and 3-5 years after)

Most Common Tax Deductions for Investors

Personal Property Deductions

If you live in your home, you can deduct up to $10,000 of property taxes from your personal income.

You can also deduct mortgage interest up to $750,000 of mortgage debt on your primary residence.

Additionally, you don't have to pay the first $250,000 (if single) or $500,000 (if married let us know if you need help finding the Real Estate wifey or hubby) of capital gains on your property, as long as you have lived in it for two of the last five years.

Depreciation

This is only applicable for investment properties. You basically deduct the costs of buying and renting properties from your income because “the equipment gets used over time”.

Standard Depreciation - Each year you can write off 1/27.5 of cost basis for residential or 1/39 of cost basis for commercial of the useful life of the property. Your cost basis is the value not including the land.

Accelerated Depreciation - 2022 is the last year you can take the full depreciation write-off in your first year (write-offs can be carried forward). It goes down by 20% every year after

Depreciation recapture - A portion of this needs to be paid back if you sell it before it fully depreciates

1031 Exchange

💡 Presentation Deep Dive into 1031’s with Weiming Peng, tell them SARE sent you

This is the biggest life-hack of all of time. A 1031 exchange is a swap of one real estate investment property for another that allows capital gains taxes to be deferred. You pay no capital gains and no depreciation recapture on the sale of a property as long as

  1. Within 45 days of your sale, you have identified a property or group of properties that is more expensive than the property sold
  2. Close on the property or properties identified with 180 days
  3. Use a Qualified Intermediary to handle your sale and escrow

The government gives you this benefit because they want to reward good investors. Hypothetically, they might delay getting taxes today, but get a bigger payout when you sell the bigger property. Unless you just keep trading up forever until you die, which is how generational wealth is created.

Opportunity Zones

Trump tax breaks that end in 2026. You pay get to avoid some of the capital gains on the sale of anything that has capital gains tax including stocks and businesses as long as

  1. You invest in a QOZ fund investing in a Qualified Opportunity Zones area, generally low income
  2. Hold the money in the fund for 7-10 years
  3. You pay no capital gains on the sale of the fund project and defer your own capital gains tax for a few years

Talk to your CPA about this one, there’s a few more rules to this. Rule of thumb is don’t invest in one of these funds just for the tax break. Invest because it’s a good deal and if it has tax breaks, that’s just icing on the cake.

Real Estate Professional Status (REPS)

If you qualify for this, you can take the maximum amount of taxable write-offs available. This is how Trump can make millions a year but pay nothing.

💡 The biggest cheat code is if one spouse is an active professional and you file taxes jointly, you can write it off as aggregate. This means you can use the spouse's real estate write-offs on your W2 income.

For example, say I’m an agent and made $100k this year with $150k in write offs. My wife might be a software engineer at Amazon, but because we file jointly, I can use the extra $50k to write off her income as well

Let us know if you need help finding your W2 or REPS hubby/wife

Qualifications:

  1. Spend most of your time doing real estate
  2. And have over 750 hours a year spent doing real estate activities

If you are not REPS, which is essentially everyone else in the world that has a W2, active participants can write off up to 25k from their taxable income, which phases out after 150k Aggregate Gross Income (AGI).

Yes that means even if you spend more than 750 hours a year doing real estate, but you a have a W2, the IRS is not going to believe you are REPS status. How do you maximize your write-offs as a W2 employee?

If you have W2 at a real estate company like a brokerage or development firm, you may claim status as long as you own at a least a significant share of the firm.

Other Tax Deductions

Startup tax deductions

Can deduct 5k first year of business
  • Research and investigation of real estate
  • How to books and seminars
  • Attorney and Accounting fees (Except to complete purchase)
  • Licenses
  • Insurance premiums
  • Meal/food/lodging when prepping place to rent
  • Repairs
  • Office supplies (short term)
  • Bank checks
  • Advertising property
Above 5k must deduct over 15 years

Put up a "For Rent" sign on the lawn and take a photo to document the date. This will help you switch to operating expenses quickly.

Operating tax deduction (running expenses)
  • Interest payments
  • Property taxes
  • Professional fees for attorney/accounting/property management/rental broker
  • License renewals
  • Insurance premiums + car insurance
  • Transportation costs from car
  • Out of town travel (meal/beverages at 100%)
  • Property upkeep
  • Office supplies
  • Education
  • Advertising and tenant screening
  • Utilities
  • Business meals and entertainment at 100%
  • Membership fees for landlord clubs
  • Home office expenses
    • Can deduct painting/adding carpet to the home office room
    • Office furniture
    • Need to set aside a section of the room
Depreciation (capital expenditures)
  • Last for over a year
  • Worn out or used up over time
  • Remain in hands as owner for more than one year
  • Used in rental business
  • Tools/equipment
  • Appliances
  • Carpets
  • Anything 200$ or less for rental
  • Depreciation based on irs rules
    • Property over 27.5 years
    • Software has 3 years
Meals and Entertainment

100% meal write off only for LLC not individuals

What is the Short Term Rental Tax Loophole?

Managing a STR is lot of work, because of this you can potentially claim it as active income instead of passive income and write it off against your high income job to reduce your tax liability. It can be found in the tax code under Reg. Section 1.469-1T(e)(3)(ii)(A).

If you meet meet one of seven criteria, you should qualify.

Here they are:

  1. Spend more than 500 hours on the short term rental business
  2. Do substantially everything for the STR business
  3. Spend more than 100 hours on the activity and no one other individual spends more time than you do
  4. Significant participation activity for more than 100 hours, and your combined activity in all significant participation activities exceeds 500 hours

Once you meet one of these tests, and your short-term rental is excluded from the definition of a rental activity, then it is considered non-passive. You can learn more here.

💡 Note: The short term rental loophole doesn’t require you to be a real estate professional.

Taxable Entities

Rule of thumb?

C-corp or S-corp for Active income. C-Corp is better if plan on raising a bunch of money.

Partnership or passthrough for passive income. If you are investing passively in a syndication, you don’t need an LLC.

Self-employment (S-Corp)

  • Passthrough entity. Only pay individual income taxes, shareholders can also get losses to offset income
  • Avoids self employment income tax of 15.3% on up to 120k (not on distribution, only on salary). 2.5% after
  • Your W2 you pay yourself is reasonable salary based on experience levels, etc
  • 20% qualified business income deduction: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 gave eligible S corp shareholders a deduction of up to 20% of net “qualified business income”.
  • Capped at 100 share holders, who are individuals and US citizens

Corporate (C-Corp)

  • No restrictions on classes or ownership, infinite number of share holders
  • “Double taxed”. Once at corporate rate and then at what you pay yourself

    However, max corporate tax rate is only 21% vs max personal tax rate of 37%

eQRP

  • Exempt, section 401 of tax code
  • Rents are excluded from UBIT
  • You are trustee and call the shots
  • 408 prohibits funds from being invested in life insurance
  • can acquire as distribution from either account

IRA

  • When IRA's makes profit with leverage, 37% is taxed
  • Cannot borrow money to make money without triggering UBIT
  • Custodian costs money for SDIRA

Tax Strategies Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlcBF1ulzFc&ab_channel=ChrisTaoRealEstate-InvestinAustin%2CTexas - By Chris Tao

Company to Reduce Your Property Tax Bill Software (Free):

https://www.ownwell.com/

You put your address and they want 20-25% of the tax bill they save you.

They have an FAQ https://www.ownwell.com/resources#casestudies-posts for Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, and Washington

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