Comprehensive List of Tax Deductions?

[Anthony Drew Gary]

Warning: Newbie Investor Question!

I'm going to start renting out my first house in January and I'm curious if there's any sort of cheat sheet / checklist / reference of all of the different tax deductible expenses that fall under the 16 IRS categories.  I've done a lot of research and reading, but I'm positive my list is missing things.  

Is my head in the clouds?  Or does someone else thing about this the same way I do?

Thanks BP!
Anthony

[Paul Caputo]

Here's a little more info about using cost seg to maximize your deductions. 

If you want to maximize your depreciation deductions (And therefore maximize current cash flow: More deductions now means you keep more cash in your pocket now to reinvest while getting less deductions later on.) in the early years of ownership you should do a cost segregation study. 

Cost seg doesn't give you more depreciation overall, but it does accelerate it to give you a lot more depreciation now (On some assets in rental property it goes from a 3.636% deduction to a 40% deduction in the first year.) and in the next couple years as well as allow you to properly expense any component of the property upon replacement while starting depreciation on the replacement asset. 

For it to make sense to your bottom line you'd need to be holding for at least 5 years and your property should be over $200K less land value, so $250K total cost could be right depending on your land value. The tax benefit of a study depends on the overall cost of the depreciable property and the amount that can be classified for accelerated depreciation. 

On average an engineered cost segregation study will result in a tax credit of $25,000 for a $500K property. The main drawback is the cost of the study which is high because it is quite complex to properly classify every individual component in the property, and per IRS guidelines this must be done by a construction engineer or architect because of their expertise in construction techniques, design, auditing and estimating in building construction. 

If you'd like to know what your tax refund could look like with an engineered cost segregation study I'd be happy to take a look and answer any questions about cost seg.