Are You A Real Estate Professional?

Over many years of working with real estate investors, one question has come up over and over again: “Can I qualify as a real estate professional so I can deduct my passive losses against my ordinary income?” The last time was from a San Jose full-time professional who has rental property in Sunnyvale. I almost always have to disappoint my clients with the answer that they do not qualify. Several times I have had my Silicon Valley clients and their advisors disagree with me, despite explaining the rules to them. Many of them go on to report it the way they want to, and take the risk.

The United States Tax Court just answered the same old question again. In Yusufu Yerodin Anyika et ux. (TC Memo. 2011-69, March 24, 2011), the taxpayers were a married couple that had been buying, renovating, managing and selling rental real estate for years. He worked 37.5 hours per week, 48 weeks per year as an engineer and she worked 24 hours per week as a nurse. During 2005 and 2006 they had two rental properties, which Mr. Anyika considered to be his second job as well as their investment property. They filed their tax returns themselves with TurboTax, claimed he worked 800 hours per year managing the real estate, and deducted their rental real estate losses. The Tax Court held that for them to be able to deduct their rental real estate losses he must have worked more than 750 hours and over half of his working hours on their real estate investments. Mr. Anyika then re-estimated his real estate hours to be 1920, just over the 1800 he spent in his day job. Unfortunately for Mr. Anyika, the Tax Court did not believe his new, unsubstantiated re-estimate and held that he did not qualify as a real estate professional. The Tax Court did hold that Mr. Anyika qualified for a $25,000 deduction for materially participating in real estate, but this deduction was not available to him because his adjusted gross income was too high.

Something to note, which was not an issue in the Anyika case, is that the rules are even worse for short term rentals. Time spent on properties with average rental periods of seven days or less does not count towards the 750 hour test, and losses on those properties are also ineligible for the $25,000 deduction for actively managed real estate. (Source: Kiplinger Tax Letter, March 18, 2011, Vol. 86, No. 6)

So – if you think you should qualify as a real estate professional, create a log of every hour you work on the real estate and, at the end of the year, compare those hours to the hours you work in your regular job. If the real estate hours exceed 750 hours and also exceed the hours you worked in your regular job and you can prove it, you qualify as a real estate professional. If they do not, try for the material participation test to get the $25,000 deduction (unless your income is too high). And no matter what you choose to do… don’t blame TurboTax. The Tax Court has heard that one before.