Renting from my LLC for my primary residence

[J. Mitchell Bernier]

I had an intriguing thought today as I was driving home and was wanting to see if this was possible, let alone legal. Let me start with some background. I live in farming country in South Georgia and one of the things that I learned was that farmers are some of the best when it comes to using tax loopholes. One of the more popular ones I see is when a farmer owns land and then that same farmer creates an LLC for his farming operation and rents the land from himself. This allows him to write that rent expense off his income, and you guessed it is always the same amount of his loan payment.

So my question is can REI's do this as well, but flip the script. Can I purchase my primary residence through my LLC, then rent from LLC to live in? In theory this would allow me to depreciate my home on my business tax return and write down the interest and taxes off the business income. If I don't do this I am not able to depreciate my home or write off taxes or interest due to the doubling of the standard deduction.

I am not a CPA, but am curious what others may think 

[Bob Norton]

@J. Mitchell Bernier The reason that a farmer rents his land to his farming LLC is that he pays SE taxes on his farming income, but rental income is not subject to rental income. So, he reduces his overall SE taxes by lowering his farming income, but he still pays regular income tax on his rental income. As @Tom S. mentions, by placing your primary residence into an LLC removes your ability for a tax-free gain on the sale of your home (since it is owned by your LLC and not you.)  Also, when you sell it, you would have to pay tax on depreciation recapture.  As @Natalie Kolodij mentions, there are special rules for "self-rentals", an example is that you cannot deduct rental expenses in excess of your rental income.  So, you will not be able to deduct much of the depreciation on the property (or other expenses if you don't charge yourself market rents) while you rent it to yourself.  And, if you did generate a profit from renting to yourself, then you would be paying taxes on phantom income (which is income that you never actually received.)