Saturday 29 November 2014

Knowing More About Cost Segregation

By Christa Jarvis


When it comes to taxation, there are a lot of rules and regulation under the law that one would have to follow. Of course this does not mean that there are no loopholes that one can make use of in order to lessen taxes under the law legally. If one is an owner of a building, there is one concept known as cost segregation that he can use in order to significantly lessen taxes.

Now basically, this concept is all about using the concept of separating real property assets from personal assets in order to lower taxes. Now this is done by an expert in order to report taxes when the filing day would come. Experts who are good at handling taxes with regard to properties would do this.

Now if one would go through this process, most people would ask exactly what he will do. Well the main goal of this process is to simply decrease the depreciation time for the property assets. This in turn would actually help lessen the taxes of the property owner.

Now when one would talk about personal property assets, this would include the land improvements, construction costs, and the building itself. Of course the experts would have to identify the costs that have to do with construction. From there, these items can actually be depreciated in the books for tax purposes.

Just to give one an idea of what can be depreciated, basically building costs can be depreciated over a 27.5 or a 39 year period. Now other costs like exterior improvements and adding of utilities and decorations can be depreciated over five, seven, or fifteen years. These are just some costs that can have accelerated depreciation but there are still more that one can be able to identify if he is an expert.

Now in order to know about these costs, the expert would first have to work together with the engineer. Now it is crucial that he would go over the blueprints so that he will know some of the things that can be taken care of. Once he has done this, then he can already have a clear idea of the things that he would have to do.

He will have to be performing an engineering study on the components of the building which means that he would at least have to have some experience when dealing with buildings. First, he will have to be dealing with the walls, floors, ceilings, and everything else that was added to these parts. He would then also have to deal with the utilities that were added like water, electricity and telecommunications.

Now the last thing to do would be to analyze all the data that was collected in this building and create a tax report. Now if one would do this, then his taxes will definitely be lessened because of depreciation. Now one of the benefits that he will derive from this aside from lower taxes would be the opportunity for him to discover more real estate liabilities.




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