According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), you can generally deduct expenses of renting property from your rental income. However, the expenses incurred while building a property for rental are not immediately deductible. Instead, they are added to the cost basis of the property and are depreciated over a period of 27.5 ...
so the rent on manlift gets added to the cost.
the purchase of the manlift must be depreciated and the depreciation adds to the cost. when it's converted to personal use it is deemed sold to you for fair market value. so at that point gain or loss is recognized depending on the FMV vs tax basis at that time. those repair costs for the manlift either get added to the cost basis of the house unless they improve the manlift in which case they get added to the depreciable basis. costs of moving it after the job is done is a nondeductible personal expense.
