Thinking about converting your home into a rental property?

In some cases, homeowners move to new residences, but keep their present homes and rent them out. If you’re thinking of doing this, you’re probably aware of the financial risks and rewards. However, you also should know that renting out your home carries potential tax benefits and pitfalls.

Rental real estate rules

If you’re no longer personally using your home at all, you’re generally treated as a regular real estate landlord once you begin renting it out. That means you must report rental income on your tax return, but you’re also entitled to offsetting deductions for the money you spend on utilities, operating expenses, incidental repairs and maintenance (for example, fixing a leak in the roof).

Additionally, you can claim depreciation deductions for the home. You may be able to fully offset rental income with allowable landlord deductions.

Passive activity rules

However, under the passive activity loss (PAL) rules, you may not be able to currently deduct the rent-related deductions that exceed your rental income unless an exception applies. Under the most widely applicable exception, the PAL rules won’t affect your converted property for a tax year in which your adjusted gross income doesn’t exceed $100,000, you actively participate in running the home-rental business, and your losses from all rental real estate activities in which you actively participate don’t exceed $25,000.

You should also be aware that potential tax pitfalls may arise from renting your residence. Unless your rentals are strictly temporary and are made necessary by adverse market conditions, you could forfeit an important tax break for home sellers if you finally sell the home at a profit. In general, you can escape tax on up to $250,000 ($500,000 for married couples filing jointly) of gain on the sale of your principal home. However, this tax-free treatment is conditioned on your having used the residence as your principal residence for at least two of the five years preceding the sale. So, renting your home out for an extended time could jeopardize a big tax break.

What if you don’t rent out your home long enough to jeopardize your principal residence exclusion? The tax break you would have gotten on the sale (the $250,000/$500,000 exclusion) won’t apply to the extent of any depreciation allowable with respect to the rental or business use of the home for periods after May 6, 1997. It also won’t apply to any gain allocable to a period of nonqualified use (any period during which the property isn’t used as the principal residence for you, your spouse or former spouse) after December 31, 2008. A maximum tax rate of 25% will apply to this gain (attributable to recapture of depreciation deductions).

Selling at a loss

Some homeowners who bought at the height of the market may ultimately sell at a loss. In such situations, the loss is available for tax purposes only if the owner can establish that the home was in fact converted permanently into income-producing property. Here, a longer lease period helps an owner.

However, if you’re in this situation, be aware that you may not wind up with much of a loss for tax purposes. That’s because the beginning basis (the cost for tax purposes) when the home is first converted to a rental property is equal to the lesser of actual cost or the property’s fair market value when it’s converted to rental property. So, if a home was bought for $300,000, converted to a rental when it was worth $250,000, and ultimately sold for $225,000, the loss would be only $25,000. Keep in mind that depreciation deductions while it was a rental property also reduce basis.

Be prepared for taxes on social security benefits

Whether you’ve filed your 2022 tax return or soon will, one thing you don’t want to experience is a surprise. Many older people are caught off guard when they find that some of their Social Security benefits are taxable.

How much might you have to pay? Depending on your other income, between 50% and 85% of your Social Security benefits could be hit with federal income tax. (There could also be state tax.) This doesn’t mean you’ll pay 50% to 85% of your benefits back to the government. It means you may have to include 50% to 85% of them in your income subject to regular tax rates.

Calculate provisional income

To determine how much, if any, of your benefits are taxed, you must calculate your “provisional income.” Doing so involves adding certain amounts (for example, tax-exempt interest from municipal bonds) to the adjusted gross income on your tax return.

If you file jointly, you’ll need to add your spouse’s income, and then further add half of the Social Security benefits that you and your spouse received during the year. The result is your joint provisional income.

If you file a joint tax return and your joint provisional income isn’t above $32,000, none of your Social Security benefits are taxed. If your provisional income is $32,001 to $44,000, you must report up to 50% of your Social Security benefits as income. If your provisional income is more than $44,000, you need to report up to 85% of your Social Security benefits as income on Form 1040.

For single taxpayers, if your provisional income is between $25,001 and $34,000, you must report up to 50% of your Social Security benefits as income. And if your provisional income is more than $34,000, the general rule is that you need to report up to 85% of your Social Security benefits as income.

Sidestep a surprise

If you aren’t paying tax on your Social Security benefits now because your income is below the floor, or you’re paying tax on only 50% of those benefits, an unplanned increase in your income can have a significant tax cost. Not only will you pay tax on the additional income, but you may also have to pay tax on (or on more of) your Social Security benefits and you may get pushed into a higher tax bracket.