You are required by law to depreciate rental property. Then when you sell the property all depreciation is recaptured and taxed at a minimum rate of 15%. It can (and usually does) go higher.
If you do not claim deprecation as required by law, then when you sell the property you must reduce your cost basis by the amount of deprecation you *should* have taken, which means you're paying taxes on it anyway. In my opinion that's double taxation. But it's the law, and my opinion doesn't change that.
