Carl
Level 15

Investors & landlords

Let's say you purchased the property for $100,000.  At that time you allocated 30% to the land. You have $70K for the structure and $30K for the land.

Next, you did $24K of property improvements to the structure.  That makes $94K for the structure and $30K for the land with a total cost basis of $124K now.

Now I'm assuming you sold the property at a gain. With two or more assets listed (the property itself, and the property improvements) your selling price on each asset needs to be "at least" $1 more than your cost basis in that asset. Otherwise, depreciation will not be recaptured and taxed correctly. The sales price of all assets should add up to your total sales price.  Here's an example using $200K as the sales price, but it's rough since this example doesn't actually show/account for recaptured depreciation.

Asset                   Cost                     Sales Price                  Sales Expenses                 Gain

Structure           $70000                 $120,000                        $7000                          $63,000

Land                   $30000                 $40,000                          $3000                          $7,000

HVAC                 $19,000                 $30,000                          $0                                $11,000

Windows            $5,000                   $10,000                         $0                                 $5,000

TOTALS             $124,000             $200,000                         $10,000                     $86,000

To that $86,000 gain you would add recaptured depreciation. But the program will tax that recaptured depreciation separately at the "ordinary" income tax rate.

If you show a gain on some assets and a loss on others, the program will incorrectly included the depreciation on those "loss" assets in the gain. That unrecaptured depreciation would then be taxed at the capital gains tax rate, instead of the ordinary tax rate.

Having owned the property a year, more or less, the depreciation isn't really going to be that much. But if your sale date is less than a year from your original purchase date you'll be taxed at the higher short term capital gains tax rate.