Improve Your Home and Reduce Your Taxes!

 

Home improvement taxes are not hard to come by.

Although it may sound too good to be true, there are plenty of home improvement repairs that you can make on your home which may wind up being deductible come tax season, due to their costs. Let us go through the process together, and break down all of the subtle distinctions of home improvement deductions…

1. Improvement Vs. Repair. When it comes to taxes, money you spend on your home can be broken into two categories, improvements and repairs. When figuring out your home improvement taxes, you will add the the cost of improvements to the tax basis of your house.

This tax basis is what you will wind up subtracting from the sales price to find out how much you will profit. A home improvement tax deduction is based on repairs which add value to the home, or prolong its life. Home repairs which do not qualify as such are not able to be added to the basis.

2. Not as Many Worries About Tracking. In the past, when filing home improvement taxes, keeping every single receipt was very important. Every cent tacked onto the basis of a home meant one less cent the IRS could tax later. But today, due to the tax free nature of profits from home sales, tracking has become less of an importance.

3. Staying Organized is Staying Prepared. Although tracking is not as important to making money when selling your home, you will still need receipts to present when filing home improvement taxes. Keep a folder with all receipts and records of any home improvements.

If the real estate value of homes in your neighborhood has increased, your home could become taxable when it is time to sell, keep track of all improvements to reduce the rate of available taxes by keeping your records safe for as long as you live in the house.

If you own or operate a business which is based out of your house or rent a portion of your home out to a tenant, deductions may be possible when filing home improvement taxes. If you do rent a portion of the home, repairs (as well as improvements) made to that portion can be deductible with your home improvement taxes.