If you own rental properties, you need to know how to qualify for real estate professional status, and then you need to create proof of time spent on your rentals. No time-spent proof, no passive-loss deductions. Next, you have to decide to group or not to group your properties. Don’t leave this grouping decision to the IRS or to the courts.

The government subsidizes your rental property profits when you realize all your tax deductions. If tax law’s passive-loss rules deny your current rental losses, your profits will go down. Therefore, you need to know how the passive-loss rules work so you can maximize your rental profits and avoid unpleasant visits with the IRS.

If you own rental property, you need to pay attention to the passive-loss rules. This court case helps clarify two rules that can enable deductions for rental property losses.

Revenue Procedure 2010-13 requires disclosure of the business and rental groups you form to avoid the disallowance of losses under the passive-loss rules. At first glance, you might think, “Oh, no, not more disclosures.” But further examination shows an audit-proofing aspect to this disclosure that is most appealing.

This article contains our Rental Property Analyzer software to help you analyze your possible real estate investments in an absolutely understandable and meaningful way. If you are thinking of buying a rental property, you absolutely, positively must read this article and use this software, which is included in your subscription.

You want to deduct your business, rental, and non-rental losses when possible, because those deductions put cash in your pocket. The sooner you get the cash, the faster you can put that cash to work for you building your net worth. This article helps you realize those losses sooner.

Doing business in two different locations requires tax knowledge. The purchase of a town house in the second location brings up many tax planning opportunities and a few hazards to avoid.

The tax strategy of renting property you own personally to your businesses needs your attention if you want tax benefits. Similarly, special recharacterization rules apply to rentals of land and also when land is a big part of the rental.

If the passive loss rules are taking away your tax deductions on your real estate rentals, examine the real estate professional rules for an escape. You can be a lawyer, medical doctor, etc., and also qualify as a real estate professional.

You can be a lawyer, CPA, MD, or business owner and qualify as a real estate professional if you or your spouse materially participate in the rentals or in the rental group.

Learn how to qualify for the rental real estate active investor category for deducting rental property losses of up to $25,000. You can plan deductions to lower the $100,000 and $150,000 ceilings.

To deduct your passive losses as a real estate professional, you must prove time spent. Since you need this proof, use these tactics to keep track of your time and also increase your overall profits on the rentals.

If you own rental properties, you don’t want the tax law to call the rentals an investment. Instead, you want the rental properties to qualify as a trade or business so that you achieve tax favored Section 1231 treatment and other tax breaks.

To deduct a loss on a charter fishing activity, you must materially participate in the activity. When the activity is organized as an LLC, you have more choices for material participation than a limited partner.

Ownership and involvement in your business may not be sufficient if your business suffers an operating loss. To deduct a business loss, you must materially participate in the business.

A real estate rental is automatically in the passive bucket if you do not qualify as a real estate professional. In this court case, a real estate agent qualified her real estate agent work time as time spent in a real property trade or business. Thus, she qualified to deduct her real estate rental property losses.

Two tax attorneys told our group that time spent as a real estate agent actually worked against you for the time test (more than 50 percent) to qualify as a real estate professional. The attorneys claimed that in audits the IRS is disallowing the unlimited loss to people who are full-time agents, treating their agent work time as non–real estate time and thus making it just about impossible to meet the 50 percent test.

If you are currently renting your office, you should consider buying it. When your business purchases your office, you avoid most of the tax law hardships imposed on the purchase of a rental property. Use the Rent/Buy Office Analyzer, a program included in your subscription to this newsletter, to see the answers to all the qualifying questions. It also puts everything into numbers you can understand, the biggest of which is your “annual compound profit.” This is huge.

Mr. and Mrs. Clark hired a new tax advisor. He told them that because they qualified as being in the real property business, they had available to them the tax law option of “group or not group” your rental properties and that grouping could release tax deductions currently trapped by the passive loss rules.

Rental property treatment starts on the day you place the property in service for rental use, not when you install a tenant. We answer one taxpayer’s questions about reporting a rental house for which he found no tenant.

Learn from one doctor’s situation. You can deduct passive losses of real estate every year, despite a high income. Forming a C corporation also might provide welcome relief.

Learn from Dr. Uy’s mistakes: prepare your taxes correctly. In his case, he should have hired a tax advisor and preparer that would have saved him thousands of dollars. See what you can do to avoid his mistakes.

Learn from one taxpayer’s court case: know the rules about renting to your corporation before claiming passive income.

Carolyn Federson lost all of her rental property loss deductions when the court rejected some of the details of her rental property time records and made its own estimate of the time she spent on her rentals.

One taxpayer is audited, and told incorrect information by an IRS agent. We give her proof to support her position.

The ability to deduct rental property losses can alter investment returns by as much as 40%. In many cases, the ability to deduct the losses can make the sole difference in making a profit or incurring a loss on the rental.

To win your rental property deductions you need proof of the time spent. This taxpayer had inadequate proof.

Andrew D’Avanzo had one very bad day in court. He did not group his rental properties, and had an insufficient time log that did not satisfy the court. He lost a lot of money. Learn from his mistakes: know the details about tax law!

While testifying at his trial, this taxpayer learned how to deduct business clothing, gloves, and boots--too little, too late.

To treat your rental property as a tax shelter and deduct your rental property losses against non-passive income, you first need classification as a real estate professional and then you need material participation on the individual properties, or if grouped, on the group. Good and proper tracking of time spent by you and, if married, your spouse is required to prove both your real estate professional status and material participation.

At a meeting of landlords, the guest lawyer stated that the S corporation terminates with too much passive income. Many attendees heard this comment incorrectly. The too much passive income termination problem applies to S corporations which were previously C corporations.

When you lose your tax records for any reason—including floods, theft, hurricanes, and earthquakes—you will find that the tax law grants no mercy to your lost records. You simply have the right to substantiate your deductions using a reasonable reconstruction of those records.

The properly used business condo does not run up against the vacation-home, passive-loss, or entertainment-facility rules.

Historic rehab tax credits can put you in Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed favorite spot. Tax credits often exceed the cash you invest in the project making the historic rental or office building a “nothing down” deal for you. Add nonrecourse financing to the package and you have no personal risk. None of your cash in the deal and no personal risk—this is Mr. Trump’s favorite spot. You might do as many Congressional leaders do: Donate your personal home’s historic facade to charity so can realize big tax credits.