It depends but if the gain from your home sale is exempt under the home gain exclusion (and you have not rented or taken the home office expense), you will not have to report the home sale or pay any taxes on your home sale for federal, CA or MI income tax purposes.
You do not need to enter the sale of your primary
residence and there is no federal or state reporting requirement if:
- You never used your primary
residence as a rental or took home office deduction
- You have a loss on the sale
of your home (Personal capital losses are not reported on your tax return)
- You did not receive a Form
1099-S and
- You meet the home gain
exclusion (see below)
You can take the gain exclusion as
long as you considered the home your "primary residence" for 2 of the
last 5 years. If you have a capital
gain from the sale of your main home, you may qualify to exclude up to $250,000
of that gain from your income. You may qualify to exclude up to $500,000 of
that gain if you file a joint return with your spouse. See Sale of Your Home for more information on the exclusion.
Please note that if you used the property as a rental during your ownership of the property, you will need to recognize a capital gain on the depreciation recapture amount.
According to the IRS, when
you sell a property that was used as a rental, you must pay 25 percent
recapture tax (also referred to as Section 1250 recapture) as well as regular
state income tax on the depreciation you claimed. (Remember the IRS will assume
that you claimed the correct amount of depreciation every year—this is true regardless of whether you
actually claimed any depreciation on your tax return).
In order to calculate the capital gain or loss when
you sell a residence that had been converted to rental property, you
need to know three things:
- Your adjusted tax basis in
the property (both at the time of the conversion and the time of the sale)
- The sale price
- The fair market value of the
property when it was converted to rental property
If the
converted property is later sold at a gain, the basis for purposes of
determining the capital gain is your adjusted tax basis in the property at the
time of the sale. If the sale results in a loss, however, the basis used is the
lower of the property's adjusted tax basis at the time of the conversion or the
fair market value when the property was converted from personal use to rental
property. This loss rule ensures that any deflation in value occurring while
the property was held as a principal residence does not later become deductible
upon your sale of the rental property; a loss on the sale of a principal
residence is not deductible. As usual, you calculate your capital gain by
subtracting your adjusted basis from the sale price of the property.
Click this link for further information about reporting
the sale of a capital asset
