Why do you think the IRS wants to drive you into improvements?
With passive income like rental property, it's simple really. When you take the required depreciation it does not reduce your AGI one penny. It reduces your cost basis basically.
But in the year you sell and have to recapture all that prior year deprecation, it does add to your AGI and therefore has the possibility of pushing you into a higher tax bracket resulting in more tax income for the IRS.
There's two ways to look at recaptured depreciation. One way is to say it reduces your cost basis in the asset. The other way is that the recaptured depreciation is added to your sales price. Either way, your taxable gain on the sale is higher. If sold at a loss, your tax deductible loss you can claim is lower.
The fact that recaptured depreciation is taxed at a maximum of 25% doesn't help many really, as most folks who normally fall into the 12% tax bracket will find the taxable gain on their sale pushes them into the 22% bracket. Those folks who normally fall in the 22% tax bracket will find the taxable gain from the sale will push them into the 24% tax bracket.
Add to that, a vast majority of folks have no understanding at just how tax brackets work. For example, a person in the 22% tax bracket incorrectly and mistakenly believes that all of their income is taxed at the full 22%. That's just not true.
