Tax Writeoffs Out of State Property-

[Susan O.]

We reside and pay California tax.  We have rentals in Ohio, Hawaii and Nevada now.  For travel expenses we have racked up a lot of expenses on a property in Hawaii. 

For the Hawaii duplex. We legitimately have been flying there 4 times a year to fix up the property, meet property manager, deal with tenant legal issues etc.  Travel Expenses are rental car, gas, flights (about $8k), food expenses etc.   We literally had code enforcement write up everything on the property, as well as code enforcement and a bad eviction so we had to visit the property a lot and have tons of losses and expenses.

We only had about $6,000 in rental income, about $6k in repairs and $15,000 in capital improvements...  yet have $12,000 in travel expenses and $2000 in meals from trips.  I could see how this could look like a red flag to an auditor

I am not sure if my Tax advisor is just too conservative, but he keeps recommending that we don't write off that much.  He basically said just writeoff about $6,000 in expenses.

I feel like we have enough of a paper trail and receipts to show our travel relates to expenses and legit travel, but I also don't want to make it seem like we're doing these trips just for

Anyone have advice here?  Is my tax advisor just too conservative or does he have a point.  I don't want to miss out on write offs that are legit. But he advised that getting audited will just be an expensive, time consuming

[Scott Mclaren]

I would take all the expenses you have as long as you can back it up. You have other rentals you said and a track record going back a couple years. I would find a new tax guy.