[An earlier version of this article appeared on Forbes.com.]
This has to be one of the stupidest tax breaks ever.
The depreciation tax deduction lets landlords (but not homeowners) deduct about 3% of what they paid for their houses from their income each year, essentially treating homes like cars, which famously start to lose value the moment they leave the lot. In real life, houses gain value — appreciate — over time.
Since they pay less in annual federal taxes, landlords can afford to pay a bit more when buying rental houses, which are often smaller properties that would otherwise be purchased by young, first-time buyers. That drives up home prices for millennials and other first-time home buyers.
And artificially high home prices are a drag on the U.S. economy because when people have to spend more money on homes built years or decades ago, they have less money to spend on stuff that people are making today and that create jobs today.
This means the economy grows more slowly because high home prices suck money away from the real economy.
Two Different Tax Systems
We have two entirely different tax systems for homes — the tax system for homeowners and the tax system for landlords. But homeowners and landlords compete against each other to buy the same homes. That means tax breaks for landlords can give them an advantage over people who are buying homes to live in.
In the logic of the business tax system, if you buy paper for your office printer, it’s a business expense, and you deduct the entire cost of the paper from your business income to determine your business profit (and taxes) for the year.
But if instead of buying paper you bought a laser printer, you could only deduct one-fifth of the cost of the laser printer from your business expenses each year for five years. The idea is that the laser printer (and office equipment in general) will last about five years before becoming obsolete and valueless, so you can deduct one-fifth of its cost each of those five years. That is, the laser printer is “depreciated” over five years for tax purposes.
The U.S. business tax code, however, applies that same laser printer logic to rental houses where it doesn’t work at all. In real life, houses appreciate in value; they don’t depreciate in value like office or factory equipment.
Real Tax Deduction For Imaginary Depreciation
The depreciation tax deduction that landlords take on their rental homes is silly.
It lets landlords deduct from their rental income each year roughly 3.6% of what they originally paid for their rental buildings. For instance, if a landlord bought a house and the building was worth $200,000, the landlord could take a tax deduction of close to $7,200 every year for 27.5 years. (The deduction is applied to the value of the building, not the land.)
Because the tax code pretends single-family rental homes depreciate in value each year, landlords pay lower taxes on them each year until they sell the homes.
In reality, U.S. home prices have increased 46% since the bottom of the real estate bubble in 2012, including 108% in San Francisco and 87% in Seattle. The U.S. government, however, taxed landlords as if house values had fallen 22% since 2012.
Depreciation Recapture — Maybe
The depreciation deduction does, however, have an important downside for landlords. It increases the federal capital gains taxes landlords pay when they sell their rentals. Well, sometimes, anyway.
This additional tax on landlords when they sell rental properties is often called “depreciation recapture.” Landlords are supposed to catch up and pay back all the taxes they didn’t pay all the years they took those depreciation deductions.
But there’s a huge loophole in this tax. Landlords can continue to put off paying the depreciation recapture tax if they buy another rental house of equal or greater value whenever they sell a rental house. This bit of tax code magic is called the 1031 Exchange.
The depreciation recapture tax encourages landlords to NOT sell their rental homes, and when they do sell, the 1031 Exchange rule encourages them to buy another rental house at the same time.
And — oh, yeah — if you hold on to your rental houses long enough and you die and leave them to your kids, they won’t have to pay your depreciation recapture tax. The depreciation deduction defers some landlord taxes indefinitely and sometimes permanently.
Two Bads In One Tax Break
If the tax code stopped pretending that homes depreciate and removed this insane tax break, it would benefit millennials and other first-time home buyers in two different ways.
- Slightly higher annual taxes for landlords would increase their out-of-pocket costs and discourage some speculation.
- Much lower capital gains taxes for landlords when they sell houses would encourage landlords to sell.
Just by changing WHEN one tax is paid, we can increase the supply of homes for sale in two different ways.
What would happen to the supply of homes for sale if landlords sold some rentals and moved from owning 16% of all single-family homes toward the more traditional 13%? Or what if instead of increasing, ownership by landlords had fallen 3 percentage points to 10%? Would there be a shortage of homes for sale and such high prices today?
Artificially Low Supply
The biggest issue in real estate today is the lack of supply of homes for sale, which is helping to drive up home prices. One small way to increase supply is to get rid of the depreciation deduction, which would eventually make homes less expensive than they otherwise would be.
We saw in the Great Recession how sensitive the entire economy is to home prices. When home prices fall, household net worth tanks because your mortgage debt doesn’t fall when your house value falls. The result was lower household net worth, less household spending and the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Conclusion
Homes are by far the largest part of American family wealth. The government should recognize that fact and treat single-family homes and condos differently than it treats apartments and commercial real estate.
We could start by removing government policies that destabilize home prices and make real estate booms and busts bigger.
It’s true that other government policies are more destabilizing than the landlord depreciation tax deduction, but none are dumber.
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6 Responses to Shocking Tax Break For Landlords Raises Home Prices
Fascinating as I’ve owned rental property & taken these tax deductions but never thought of them as part of the bigger picture influencing housing prices. Great description that was easy to read & understand.
If the Gov would simply make capital gains a flat 10% or less on real estate and ditch the 1031 deferment then they would get 10% instead of nothing. As for the millennial ….ah poor babies. Seriously these laws have been on the books for ever. Why is this a millennial issue. This has always been the playing field.
Should the Gov incent home purchases by fist time buyers by making all the interest 100% deductible even under the new std deduct laws and perhaps other tax breaks sure. They should not make it less profitable for investors by changing the game in the middle of the game. That is not fair to investors and could lead to another devastating 2008 crash which is good for nobody.
The gov could level the playing field by helping first time buyer rather than screw investors.
Just saying!
Thank you Tina! I appreciate your comment`
John, or they could just get rid of the 1031 Exchange entirely for SFD and condos. I wish I could defer my taxes indefinitely or forever.
I used the Millennial angle because, essentially, it’s another way to say “first-time home buyer,” and maybe more Millennials would read it.
I agree, they shouldn’t change the rules a lot in the middle of the game. So maybe, current rentals get grandfathered-in but new purchases don’t get the depreciation deduction (or the mortgage interest deduction).
Or, how about this? No grandfathering in but depreciation recapture is cut in half? So no depreciation or mortgage interest deductions or 1031 exchanges but depreciation recapture is cut in half?
Let’s not forget that owner-occupied homes allow the owner to sell a house every two years with a huge tax free gain. Rental properties are fully taxed on any gain, and as you pointed out, subject to depreciation recapture. As a landlord I can tell you that you actually experience real depreciation. Tenants do not treat rental properties near as kindly as a homeowner treats their own home. Every time I have a vacancy, which thankfully is not too often, I wind up putting in between $15,000 and $30,000 to bring the property back to a rentable state. Additionally, you have chosen a time frame to assess home price valuation increases during which near zero interest rates over a ridiculously long amount of time have resulted in a housing prlce bubble. This is not representative of what the real estate market normally does because these are not normal conditions.
Landlords also get huge tax-free gains… on their personal homes.
And on their rental homes didn’t the tax bill last year reduce the capital gains tax for many landlords? I’d say that just makes the problem a bit bigger of landlords driving up home prices unnecessarily for homeowners which sucks money out of the real economy.
Thanks, Bonnie.
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