Depreciation recapture/taxes on a syndication investment

[Paul Ryan]

Hi all - I have a question on depreciation recapture as it relates to syndications and calculating after-tax returns as an LP (I am mainly thinking about multi-family here).  As I understand it, an LP will have to pay 25% on any depreciation taken during the life of the investment upon sale of the asset.  While cash distributions are likely mostly tax-free given the LP's K-1 is likely showing a loss, ultimately there will be a significant tax liability upon sale.  My questions are 1) can other passive losses offset deprecation recapture?  2)  Do losses from a deal prior to sale go towards offsetting the capital gains realized upon sale (such that much of the capital gains tax liability is offset)?  3) Is there any way (apart from a 1031 exchange, which I believe is fairly rare for syndications) to avoid or reduce deprecation recapture as an LP? 

If depreciation will be taxed upon sale, why do GP's look to accelerate depreciation through cost segregation.  I understand that LP's not paying taxes on distributions prior to sale is a significant advantage, but to the extent that most LP's don't have other sources of passive income, any passive losses that carried forward aren't of use to these LP's.  And in fact, if deprecation is accelerated aggressively (and not fully used up by income being generated by the property), isn't this a negative (i.e. incremental taxes) for LP's.  

Finally, I imagine certain investors (either through syndications or active investments in real estate) amass a lot of passive losses which cannot be used to offset ordinary income.  What do these investors do to utilize these losses?  Dividends, interest income, etc. cannot be offset by passive losses as far as I understand, and in many cases investing in more real estate could just result in more passive losses given deprecation etc.

Thanks very much!