Rental Property Tax Deductions, Part 2: Repairs, Insurance, and Cleaning/Maintenance Costs

You have to check that all of the professional services and costs are arranged adequately and fully recorded for the requirements of taxation conformity, if you have chosen to lease property for income. Below, we will identify some of these fundamental expenses.

Insurance

Insurance coverage payments are pre-paid prior to a designated period of time. An example here might be: you bought insurance protection with this exact rental property on March 2012 for $1200. April 2012 to March 31, 2013 would be the coverage lifetime of this plan. Remember that in this particular instance, the current tax year is surpassed by the insurance plan protection time period. Therefore you must allocate only current tax year applicable premiums concerning this year’s taxes,and document the rest for the following year. In this particular example the allowable premium deduction may be $900 (9 months April to Dec 2012) or $100 per month of qualified rental property utilization.

Please note that a lot of Insurance carriers regularly bundle premium packages between personal and business customers for a mark down charge. You need to ensure that you just allocate the fraction that is applicable to your company rental property with this deduction. The individual and non business use may be deductible on your personal tax return. Finally, Title insurance isn’t applicable as an expense and should be part of the Cost Basis of the property.

Cleaning and Maintenance

The day to day maintenance of the rental property is a deductible expense given it is for commonly used spaces and day to day cleanliness. Still, the expenses will only be tax deductible when they are not on personal use days, but they are on allowable rental times. To ensure that the property is in great condition and functioning order, you could do what many other property owners do, and employ a local hired service to take care of the rental property. This could include such expert services as cleaning windows, dusting furniture, appliance cleaning and general maintenance. Only these kinds of expert services are allowed, any kind of major structural improvements or changes must be allocated to the Cost Basis of the rental property.

Repairs

There are frequently jobs that don’t need significant reconstruction of the structure of the rental property such as painting or appliance maintenance. These types of costs that are ordinary and essential are tax deductible depending on the rental length of time.

It is important to remember that these expenditures which are generally deductible in relation to the earnings of the property, you mustn’t include the periods that are considered personal times of use. Just those costs in which are directly related to the authorized leasing timeframe are allowed.

• You can acquire all the documents defined in this article at the IRS’s website. If you’d like more info, see IRS Publication 527.

---

Federal Way Bookkeeper and CPA+John Huddleston has written extensively on tax related subjects of interest to small business owners. Since 2002, he has been the owner of Huddleston Tax CPAs. He is a graduate of Washington State University and the University of Washington School of Law.

Watch this informative video on Quickbooks from Huddleston Tax CPAs: