Canadian trying to get refund from IRS on a flip

[Shahriar K.]

I started a discussion about the flip I did in Spokane WA, and I created a topic on that. I thought I would start a new topic on my challenges to get a refund back from IRS.
The short story is I bought a property in Nov 2014 and had it sold in Oct 2015, it was on the market for close to 3 month for sale. Anyway I was still able to make a few bucks on the flip but the reason the IRS took 10% of my sale price was because I was selling it to someone who was putting a tenant in the property, if it was owner occupied I wouldn't have had to worry about this issue( also if sale price was above $280,000 and was sold to owner occupied IRS would have taken %10 off).

right now I have started working with an accountant to get my money back. He is charging me $450 for getting the refund  and $150 for getting me a US tax number. I have to send him my purchase and sale paperwork, paperwork for everything I have spent on contractors and material. The only thing I am still trying to figure out is I don't think I can use my transportation cost as expense which I don't get why. I have to get my passport certified by Canadian passport office and send a copy over. I also have to declare how many days I have spent in USA in the past 3 years. 

So far that's all I have been asked and will update this post if there are anything else. If anyone else has the experience of what I am going through please post below and let me know if this sounds about right.

[Jon Holdman]

If you've made a profit on a fix and flip in the US, you will have to file a tax return and you will have to pay tax on the profits.  That 10% sounds like withholding  from the sale.  Maybe there's something more complex going on, but you'll only get that money back if they've withheld more than the tax that's due.

The IRS doesn't care if the new buyers are buying it as a rental or are going to occupy it.   WIthholding may be different but the tax won't.