Our rental property was damaged in Hurricane Harvey, substantial repair incurred in 2018. Should 2018 repair cost be treated as Casualty loss, repair or improvement?

[glduckpond]

Further clarification...We have claimed casualty loss for tax year 2017.  However, big chunk of repair work was carried out in 2018.  Should the 2018 repair cost be categorized as improvement or repair.

[Leonard]

Because you were in a Federally declared disaster area you can file a casualty for losses that were not reimbursed by your insurance.  You will use Form 4684 to report your casualty loss. 

[glduckpond]

Thanks for your response.  We have claimed casualty loss in 2017 tax year for the rental property.  We are wondering about how to categorize the repair work done 2018.  Under "normal" circumstances, tax code gives clear guidelines to what is repair what is improvement.  However, since the rental property was damaged by the flood due to Hurricane Harvey, we had to restore the property to its original state (like to like replacement).  Would the cost in this case be categorized as repair not improvement then?