I have a vacation home (condo in a multi-unit building) that we rent out when we're not using it. Under Pub. 527 it falls into the category of a dwelling unit used as a home, thus we have to allocate use between personal use and rental/business use.
For depreciation of the condo and its contents, the percentage of business use will vary from year to year, depending on our use of the property and how many days it is rented. Now I'm in the situation where we're converting it fully to personal use, and I need to learn how to handle depreciation in the year of conversion to personal use, and future years until disposition of the property.
Any recommendations on good books or web sites to educate myself here, preferably with concrete examples of handling depreciation schedules and basis when the business use percentage varies year by year?
The same formula applies to every year. If there are 365 in that year and it's personal use for 195 days, then the actual depreciation is
195/365 of the full amount. In the year after you convert to personal use, the actual depreciation is 0/365 of the full amount, which is $0. What changes every year is the factor such as 195/365. Expenses, like painting, are also multiplied by the same percentage. For expenses like electricity and condo fees you may be able to figure out the exact amount used while it was a rental by looking at the gas/ electric statement for that month. Then again, you might be able to add all statements for the entire year and multiply by the percentage. I don't know what people actually do.
If you rent your home for less than or equal to 14 days, then you don't have to report any rental income, expenses, and depreciation.
If you rent your home for too few days in the year -- namely if you use it for personal use more than 14 days or 10% of the number of the days it is actually rented -- then the rental is considered not for profit. Deductions are allowed but limited to rental income, but they can be carried over to the following year, and depreciation may be limited.
If the property is not for profit then yes. If the property is a for profit rental, then I think it depends on the number of days the property is available for rent. I could be wrong on this, and hopefully someone will correct me then.
You have to save your form 4562 - depreciation, for every year, because when you sell your home, you'll have to recapture the depreciation.
Just search in amazon for keywords like "vacation home tax rental", etc. Anything you buy at any store will be a Schedule E expense :).
Doing the above search in google pointed me to a nice article in Smart Money:
In the year I convert to personal use, do I have a choice of when to declare the conversion to personal use (and removal from business use of the property and its contents)? It's probably simplest to claim
12/31/2009, but what if I stopped making it available for rent earlier in the year? Any days used for personal use after the removal-from-service date will change the fraction of business use. But the removal from service stops the depreciation anyway, so this may not make a material difference.
Don't qualify, see original post :-)
Yep.
Yes, I'm keeping these. Upon ultimately selling the condo, what gets recaptured? Clearly the depreciation on the unit itself. What about the contents? If I convert them all to personal use, and get rid of some of them, do I recapture depreciation of the things that are already gone at time of sale of the condo? Or only if the depreciated assets are still in he unit and sold with the unit? (e.g. appliances, bedroom furniture, etc.)
(from my post:)
I should note that my puzzlement lies with the treatment of one of the depreciated assets (an appliance) by TurboTax. It wants me to recapture some prior years' depreciation on the fridge for tax year 2009 after the appliance is fully depreciated under its lifetime schedule and after converting to personal use mid-year--but it doesn't want to recapture any of the depreciation of other assets in the same class.
I think I've found part of the cause. In TT 2009, it makes assumptions about the asset's depreciation history. If I go to the "data source" for the previous years of the appliance, it says "These computations assume that the current year's business use percentage applies to all years ...." which is not true. Previous years of TurboTax (at least
2004 - 2008) carried forward actual depreciation claimed each year.
So this leads to I think what is my key question:
What is the basis in an asset that has been depreciated over several years with different percentages of business use?
TT is assuming the depreciable basis is the Tax Year 2009 business use percentage times the purchase price. It wants to recapture depreciation beyond that number as a gain for TY 2009.
I know that for any given year, I take the % business use times the purchase price, times the appropriate depreciation percentage in the table for that asset's class. Is the basis in the asset the sum of all previous years' (business pct * purchase price)?
You don't have to declare that you've changed the residence to personal use. However, it's a good idea to make this declaration in a written statement and put it in your tax files.
However, when you convert items from business to personal use, then you have to recapture excessive depreciation. In fact, when the business use drops below 50%, you have to recapture excessive depreciation.
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The above link is for cars, but I think it applies to all items. If you took SL depreciation, then you don't have to worry about recapture. However, if you used section 179, bonus depreciation, or accelerated depreciation, then you will have amounts to recapture. Residential real property is nowdays required to use SL depreciation, but I think in the good old days you could use accelerated depreciation.
Each item -- such as the house, the bed, the fridge, the sofa, etc is a different item and will appear on a different line of form 4562. As you dispose of each item (either selling it, donating it, junking it), you'll have to report that item on form 4797. Also, when the business use drops to below 50%, then you have to recapture excessive depreciation.
Items like furniture, fridge, dishwasher are I think section 1245 property.
Items like the house, windows on the house, roof on the house, etc are section 1250 property. You'll need to talk to a pro to be sure, because I'm not.
It's basis is the original cost price minus the sum of the depreciations for each year. Say you bought a computer for $1000, then SL depreciation is roughly $200 a year for 5 years (it will probably be $100 in the first and sixth/last year if using the mid- year convention). But your personal use may be different each year, so after 5 years the accumulated depreciation might be
190+180+170+160+150, whatever that is. So the cost basis is $1000 minus that sum.
Well, (business pct * purchase price * factor). The factor is 1/5 in my example above.
Yeah, it's amazing that a search like "vacation home depreciation" doesn't give that much useful info.
And one more thing. When you convert from rental to personal use, then the section 12
And one more thing. When you convert from rental to personal use, then the section 121 exclusion (where 250k of the gain if single, 500k if married is excluded from AGI) is reduced. I don't recall the details, but it's discussed in this newsgroup and in one of the publications.
It will be in the new Pub 523 if it hasn'tyet been released. Reduce exclusion amount by the ratio of nonqualified use after Dec 31 2008 (rental is nonqualified use) to the amount of total use.
OK, one more question around the depreciation and recognizing disposal of assets. For assets converted from partial business use (X% due to vacation home rental property used as a home), TurboTax wants to recognize disposal of the assets when the property is converted to personal use. Is that correct? Or do I defer the recognition of disposal of assets until I actually dispose of them?
(We're converting it to a vacation home, not to a primary home.)
Take this example:
Appliance bought for $500 in 2003 (5 year property according to pub
946). Depreciation (partial business use each year, varying percentage) totals $300. (5 year straight line, 200DB/MQ finished in tax year 2008, thus no excess depreciation to recapture when business use falls below
50%.) Business use for 2009 is 30%.
Scenario 1: I dispose of the appliance (give it away) in 2009. I file a form 4797 for disposition of asset. What is line 21 (cost or other basis)? TT wants it to be the 2009 business percentage times the purchase price. Is this correct? Should it instead be related/adjusted based on the business percentages each year of use while it was being depreciated?
Scenario 2: I keep the appliance until at least January 2010. Do I file a form 4797 for disposition of asset for tax year 2009? What is cost or other basis?
So the business use portion has been fully depreciated. But the personal use portion doesn't get depreciated nor taxed upon sale unless sold for more than my personal-use basis in the asset, right?
What is a reasonable way to allocate the basis of the asset between personal use and business use? The last year of depreciation's business use percentage is either too much or too little, depending on the history over the life of the asset. Let's try some fabricated examples:
Example 1: Asset purchased for $500. Assume 5-year depreciation schedule, straight line. Business use is constant at 40% for all years of service of the asset. By the 6th year, this is fully depreciated. When sold, the form 4797 can be calculated: Line 21: cost or other basis: 40% * 500 = $200 Line 22: depreciation: total amount allowed or allowable over life of asset ($200) Line 23: adjusted basis: $0
Example 2: Asset purchased for $500
5 year depreciation schedule Business use varies over the course of depreciation schedule. Call it
40, 40, 20, 20, 20, 20%.
5-year SL depreciation would be 100 per year, times business use fraction: $40, $40, $20, $20, $20 = $140
When sold, for form 4797:
Line 21: cost or other basis: How to allocate the $500 to business use?
Is it reasonable to multiply each year's business use percentage times that year's deprecation percentage, and sum those together over the life of the asset to get the business use basis? Or must I use the first year, the last year, some other business use percentage * asset purchase price?
Line 22: depreciation: $140 Line 23: line 21 - 22
Example 3: Same asset Instead of 5 year SL, use 200DB/MQ, third quarter. Depreciation percentages are then 15, 34, 20.4, 12.24, 11.30, 7.06 Business use is still 40, 40, 20, 20, 20, 20. Depreciation for each year is then the yearly pct * business use for that year: 40 * 15 + 40 * 34 + 20 * 20.4 + 20 * 12.24 + 20 * 11.30 +
20 * 7.06 = 27.766% of the purchase price, or $138.83 total.
When sold: for form 4797: Line 21: cost or other basis: again, can/should/must I allocate based on the depreciation schedule? What other allocations are tenable?
Line 22: actual depreciation: $138.83 Line 23: difference
Any other thoughts on allocation of basis between personal and business use?
Line 21 is $140. In both of your examples, line 23, the adjusted basis, is zero.
The hard part is what if you sold the asset for $100. In scenario 2, the depreciation is $140. The original purchase price was $500. So the allocation of the sales price of $100 to the business portion is
140/500*$100=$28. The allocation to personal use is $72.
depreciation
Same response as above. However, is accelerated depreciation allowed when the business use is under 50%? It might be, just checking. What about bonus and section 179?
No idea. I think because the business shut down in 2009, a form 4797 should be filed in 2009. It's as if the asset was sold from your Schedule E business to your personal self for $0. At least that's my way of thinking about it. If in Aug/2010 you sell the asset for $100, you have a short term capital gain of $100. If instead in Aug/2010 you donate the item for $20, you have a short term capital gain of $20 and a charitable donation of $20.
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