All Forum Posts by: Amanda George

@Nate Meeker yes, categorizing them as startup expenses is definitely the plan.  It was only when I saw form 8825 designed to break up expenses across different properties that I started to doubt whether that was possible, since we don't actually own a property yet.  There are a couple of properties we went under contract on, but withdrew our offer after discovering major issues through paid inspections.  Not sure where that leaves us in terms of claiming those expenses in the year in which they occurred or having to wait to claim them when we finally close on a property. 

@Kelly O'Keefe For more context, we have a business checking account which we have made capital contributions into, and we have put the business expenses on the business credit card and have paid that card off from the business checking account.  For any business expense paid for with a personal card, we have submitted an expense report and reimbursed using a company check.

@Andrew Postell my sister (partner) and I both have W2 income. That's super depressing if the money we spent hunting for a property that we assumed we would be able to claim as business expenses can't actually be claimed at all. It's certainly not for lack of trying. We got beat out by other buyers on the deals that worked, we went under contract on 2-3 duplexes and backed out when major issues were discovered during inspections. So we have expenses, but no property purchased and thus, no LLC income. We never imagined it would take us over a year to find and close on a property that cash flows.

My partner and I started a LLC in January 2023 with the intent to purchase an investment rental property. But 2023 interest rates soared and we couldn't find a deal that worked. In the process, we did incur expenses for travel to our target city to view properties, inspection fees, and legal fees for setting up our LLC. Since we have zero income, I'm not inclined to pay a CPA several hundred dollars to do our taxes, so I'm trying to do it myself. Do I need to use form 8825 to report the expenses, even if we have no properties? The form seems to assume you have at least one property.