Commercial Development Taxes

[Cole North]

Hello, we are working to develop a commercial property and are consulting with a CPA to assist with our taxes. We've spent over $100k in development costs so far (architecture, engineering, permitting, legal fees to sort out easements, etc.) so I want to make sure our taxes are being done correctly. I assume this is a common situation on here and I want to make sure we're getting good advice from the person filing our taxes. I tried doing a search on the forum but couldn't find anything. My understanding is that he is saying that some of this would be included in our basis for the actual construction and some of it would be classified as startup costs. Neither of which can we write off until we open the business for operation and it seems that all of the expenses are only depreciable over time (15 years for anything classified as startup costs which starts to phase out at $50k) and 39 years for the remainder. I'm not a tax person and this is our first development so just want to make sure this all makes sense to someone more experienced. I'm happy to dig in and research more but just feel like I'm getting stuck, thanks in advance for any help/guidance!