Mitigate My Taxes

The problem is not finding a house. It is the bill.

Florida already took the state income tax off the table, so everything here is federal: depreciation, the timing of a sale, and the price you would have to pay for a building to make the arithmetic work.

HomeMitigate My TaxesWhere to start
The calculator

Your own money, in two pictures.

Put in what you earn, what you would buy, what kind of building and where you live. It shows what you pay now against what you would pay with one building — then what this year’s saving is worth in ten years.

Open to everyone

See It On Your Own Money

Where your money actually goes: your income, your bracket, and the share that leaves before you ever see it — then what owning a building does to that share.

Run your numbers
Read the three limits before you trust the number

One: it subtracts the whole first-year write-off from your income without checking whether you are allowed to — most people on a salary are not, not without real-estate-professional status or the short-term-rental route, and that is a paperwork problem we will solve with you (the 750-hour test, and the log that survives it). Two: it assumes the first-year bonus write-off is still 100%, which is set by Congress and has moved before. Three: it does not show recapture — that deduction comes back as income when you sell, unless the gain rolls into a 1031. The picture is right. It is the best case.

Six questions

In the order they actually get asked.

Each page carries the tools for one question and nothing else.

Two things we say out loud that most people bury

Because you will find out anyway.

If either applies to you, the rest of this door is a fee rather than a saving.

You may not be allowed to use the loss yet — and there is a way through

Most salaried buyers cannot take a passive loss against salary in the year it is created. The door out is that one person clears 750 hours of real property work and spends more than half their working time on it — which is why it is usually the partner rather than the earner. It is won or lost on the record they keep, so we would build them the log. How that works.

Open to everyone

Am I Even Eligible

The two-minute check before anybody buys anything: whose hours, against what other job, and whether the pace from here to December is realistic. It answers with the two IRS tests scored on your numbers — and it says no out loud when the answer is no, because a shelter you cannot use is a fee, not a saving.

Check in two minutes
And it comes back at the sale

Deductions taken early are recaptured as income when the building sells, unless the gain rolls forward.

One more thing

We are not your accountant and this is not tax advice. Everything here is arithmetic on public records and the numbers you type — run it past the person who signs your return before you act on it.