@DavidD66 wrote:
If you choose to capitalize and depreciate the cost of your roof, you should select "Real Estate" and it will be depreciated over 27 1/2 years. You may want to review the IRS Tangible property regulations – Frequently asked questions to see if your "new roof" qualifies for expensing as opposed to capitalizing.
Note that the safe harbors to treat something as an expense, are that it costs less than $2500 (for most taxpayers) or $5000 (for some.)
There is another small business safe harbor that allows you to expense improvements instead of deducting them but only if your total repair and improvements are less than 2% of your basis in the building and the building's basis is less than $1 million.
I suspect that a new roof on a residential rental will not fit into either of those safe harbors.
