H/T daytrip!

If you rent out your entire home or even a room in your home (or your vacation property) for at least 15 days in a given year, you can get a surprising tax break under Trump’s new federal tax law!

How it works: As a short-term landlord, you can get around the new law’s caps on deductions for property taxes and mortgage interest.

Example of Deducting Property Tax: Let’s say that your annual property taxes total $14,000. Trump’s new law lets you deduct a maximum of $10,000 of combined property taxes and state and local income taxes. Say you rent out 50% of your home for half the year, but use the home yourself for the other half of the year. You can deduct 50% of that six months’ worth of property taxes–25% of th total property tax bill, or $3,500, on federal Schedule E, “Supplemental Income and Loss.” You can also deduct $10,000 on your Schedule A for itemized deductions, giving a total deduction of $13,500 rather than just $10,000.

Example of Deducting Mortgage Interest: Under the new law, for any first or second home you bought after 2017, you can deduct interest on up to $750,000 of the mortgage loan (compared with the $1 million previously). But rental property has no such cap. So if you rent out, say, 50% of a home that carries a $900,000 mortgage, you can deduct interest paid on the first $750,000 of the loan, as well as interest on half the remaining $150,000.

Note: Even if you opt for the standard deduction, rather than itemize–which means you can’t take the standard type of property tax and mortgage-interest deductions–you can still take deductions corresponding to the amount of time your house or a portion of it was rented out.

The recent changes to the tax law are very new, and it’s unclear how the IRS will interpret them, so talk to a professional to make sure you’re in the clear. Give him/her this link:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p527.pdf

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Jim the Realtor
Jim is a long-time local realtor who comments daily here on his blog, bubbleinfo.com which began in September, 2005. Stick around!

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