Property Expenses

During the "many years" that you rented out the house, what costs did you use to compute depreciation on the property as a deduction on your tax return?

The cost that I used for depreciation was just the cost of the building not land.

My question is

1. To get the property in good shape the property was empty and I was incurring costs like water, electric, Insurance, mowing the lawn etc. It was about 6 months. The property was vacated in June and the property sold in Jan of next year.

Where do I place these expenses in my federal tax return? These are not capital expenditures. In my Sch E even though the property was not rented during those months? or should it added to the cost of selling the property?

1. The other question is, I did not keep the original Closing Statement. It was 20 years ago. So I do not have the figures of the Closing costs. Do I just estimate the closing costs of the purchase?

I think those costs go on form 8949 line 1(g)

Have you contacted the title company? They may have records going back that far. If you forgot which title company, check your deed, loan papers, etc. If you don't have these, you can find them at the County Recorders Office.

On 8/4/18 6:33 PM, Taxed and Spent wrote: [snip]

I do not believe this is correct. When you ceased offering the home for rent, it ceased being rental property. As you did not convert it to personal use, it became investment property. As such, the expenses you incurred were spent to either manage, conserve or maintain the property. This type of expense, prior to 2018, is a miscellaneous itemized deduction subject to the 2% of AGI limitation on 1040 Schedule A.

"This type of expense, prior to 2018, is a miscellaneous itemized deduction subject to the 2% of AGI"

And to clarify, this deduction is no longer permitted in 2018. I believe the new tax code killed this line item.