199A Rental Real Estate Safe Harbor Excludes Certain Businesses

William Byrnes

Not all taxpayers will be able to take advantage of the Section 199A safe harbor for rental real estate. While the safe harbor does apply to residential rental real estate, taxpayers are not entitled to rely upon the safe harbor if the taxpayer uses the property as a residence during the tax year.

Notably, if the real estate is rented or leased under a triple net lease, the safe harbor remains unavailable under the final rule. When satisfying the “hours of rental real estate services” criteria, only certain activities are counted toward the 250-hour threshold. Activities such as rent collection, advertising the rental, property maintenance, negotiating leases and managing the real property generally count toward the threshold. However, the taxpayer’s activities as an “investor” are not counted.

Similarly, if any property within the rental real estate enterprise is classified as a specified service trade or business, the safe harbor is unavailable for the entire business. For more information on the final safe harbor rule, visit Tax Facts Online. Read More

Have a question? Contact William R Byrnes

 

William H. Byrnes has achieved authoritative prominence with more than 20 books, treatise chapters and book supplements, 1,000 media articles, and the monthly subscriber Tax Facts Intelligence. Titles include: Lexis® Guide to FATCA Compliance, Foreign Tax and Trade Briefs, Practical Guide to U.S. Transfer Pricing, and Money Laundering, Asset Forfeiture; Recovery, and Compliance (a Global Guide). He is a principal author of the Tax Facts series. He was a Senior Manager, then Associate Director of international tax for Coopers and Lybrand, and practiced in Southern Africa, Western Europe, South East Asia, the Indian sub-continent, and the Caribbean. He has been commissioned by a number of governments on tax policy. Obtained the title of tenured law professor in 2005 at St. Thomas in Miami, and in 2008 the level of Associate Dean at Thomas Jefferson. William Byrnes pioneered online legal education in 1995, thereafter creating the first online LL.M. offered by an ABA accredited law school (International Taxation and Financial Services graduate program).

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