Depreciation Recapture upon Sale that includes Personal Property

[Margaret Feit]

Hi All, 

I'm trying to wrap my head around planning for capital gains and depreciation recapture if I start to sell some appreciated property within the next few years. I'm also trying to determine whether to take accelerated depreciation when it's available to me, and what the longer-term ramifications might be. For the moment I am leaving 1031 considerations out of this.

Suppose this year I purchase a hot tub for my rental property for $5000. As personal property and not actually part of the house, I believe I can take accelerated depreciation for it this year to write off the entire cost. If I then sell the property next year for an overall gain, and the hot tub is transferred with the property but not listed separately on the sales contract, how would I record the sale of the hot tub for tax purposes? Do I have to list it as sold for its original purchase price or a reasonable current value (say $4000) and decrease the overall reported sale of the rest of the property accordingly? If so, that would trigger depreciation recapture on the hot tub, which seems like it would essentially wipe out any benefit I had from taking accelerated depreciation, right? And with a good chance that I could be in a higher tax bracket in the year that I sell, it seems like I could actually lose money by taking the accelerated depreciation.

Alternatively, could I write it off as sold for $0 (or essentially given away), since it wasn't listed in the contract, and the buyer will not likely be categorizing it as a separate item on their end? In that case, I would end up with a slightly higher capital gain on the property overall but no depreciation recapture on the hot tub, right? That seems like a win, but is maybe not allowed. 

While I know you can't give binding legal advise on a forum, can someone clarify for me how this sort of thing is typically done and what is generally accepted by the IRS?