Tax

RE & LLC Taxes

Most real estate investors make their money twice. Once when the property performs, and again when the tax code lets them keep what most people hand back to the IRS. The second one is bigger than it looks, and it is the part almost nobody structures for on purpose.

The gap between a deal taxed well and the same deal taxed badly is not small. Depreciation you accelerated instead of spread over decades, a gain you rolled forward instead of recognized, an entity you chose for the tax result instead of by habit. Each one moves real money, and they compound. The same building held ten years can cost its owner six figures in the wrong structure that a better one would have kept.

Four areas do most of the work, and each has its own pages below. The entity you pick is a tax decision before it is a liability one. Cost segregation and depreciation decide how much of the building you write off and when. A 1031 exchange decides whether a sale triggers the tax or defers it. And the advanced moves, opportunity zones, self-directed retirement, capital-gains timing, are where the largest numbers hide.