Vacant Land for Business Use

[mrwunder]

I purchased a small vacant land parcel (1 acre) for use related to my construction business.  I use it to store equipment, process firewood (for sale) and as a general work site to build things eventually moved to other sites.  There are no buildings; there is no loan (I paid cash out of my personal account).  Do I add this as a business "asset"? Some kind of general business expense? What, if anything, can I do with this .... or should I just consider this a personal property and leave it at that?

[Carl]

"I purchased a small vacant land parcel (1 acre) for use related to my construction business..... should I just consider this a personal property and leave it at that?"

A few things here I don't know. What kind of business? Sole proprietorship? Single Member LLC? Multi-Member LLC? Partnership? S-Corp? C-Corp?

When you say "I" purchased the land, is your name on the deed of ownership? Or did your business purchase the land and your business is the listed property owner on the deed?

Without knowing these details, I'd have to write a book to cover all the possibilities. So that I don't waste your time with 90% of the information provided being absolutely useless to you, please provide the above details first.

Meanwhile, in a nutshell:

If your business is a disregarded entity I'd list it as an asset. May not really help tax-wise though since raw land is just flat out not depreciable. You also have to take into consideration the possible legal consequences if someone gets hurt on your land and has reason to sue you. Then there's the question of insurance coverage for those things you may store on the land.