Hello Harbajan, when it comes to your personal residence there is no write offs from income taxes unless you are claiming a portion of your home as a business use, office space, storage of goods etc... Please confirm with your accountant how much you can write off but in general only rental income properties are subject to the write off you mentioned. If you or any reader would like to discuss this further please do not hesitate to contact me at any time. Abraham Niyazi - Mortgage Agent - Lic# M08010640 - Centum One Financial Lic# 10758 - Cell: 416-993-4082 - Office: 1-866-RATE-708 http://www.centum.ca/abraham_niyazi/ I have access to 25 Banks/Lenders across Canada and 11 years experience in the industry.

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Can i deduct condo fee on rental property together with mortgage interest and real estate taxes? this condo fee includes master insurance, utilities(heet, water, gas)cleaning inside/outside of building

yes, you can deduct any expenses related to the rental property on Form 1040 Schedule E, where you would also report any rental income received from this property. you could also take depreciation expense on this property over 27.5 years.

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I mean, how much you have to pay tax for it and how much of it you can deduct for tax (like condo fee, property tax,...) and what happens when you sell the condo after? you have to pay extra tax again since you made money out of it?

No one can answer that for you. You have to do a complete analysis to answer the question. What is the cost of your mortgage payments, taxes, and maintenance? How is the rental market in your area? How much can you realistically get for rent? Will the rent cover your costs and still give you a reasonable profit? How long can you hold out if your renter leaves and you have difficulty finding another one? Do you want the hassle of being a landlord and having to do the maintenance when things go wrong? If you can realistically make enough money to cover your costs, including the time that it will be empty between renters, then it may be a good idea. If you can't, then it's not a good idea. Association fees are not tax deductible, so don't count on that as a break. Yes, you will have taxable income but you might also be able to deduct depreciation, so that could offset some or all of the extra tax. You will also have capital gains tax when you sell if you make a profit on the property and you don't meet the IRS requirement for having personally lived in the home for the required time.

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I understand that i can deduct mortgage interest, real estate taxes, condo fees, and repairs. i have seen conflicting reports about if i can claim depreciation if my income is over $100k or $150k. some sites say nothing about an income limit. i am trying to decide if i should rent my current condo and the ability to take depreciation is the difference between breaking even or a slight gain and a loss. any help or resources is appreciated.

Schedule E is the rental component of your tax return You cannot have a loss of more than $25K if you are NOT a real estate professional You HAVE to take the depreciation, or you might as well, because when you sell the property, you have to recapture the depreciation, regardless whether you took it or no

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A common option for rental and vacation property today is fractional ownership. you simply own 1/4 of a property in my case a condo. the terms are sale are identical to a full condo except you only receive use of the unit for 13 weeks a year. we use about 2 weeks of 13 for personal use and we always have to designate this with our rental management company as part of the process. the main thing here is how can i claim my expenses as a loss? our income does not exceed expenses and i'd like to use the losses to deduct from our taxable earnings. can i use the full amount of items like the interest on the mortgage, the condo fees, property taxes, rental management fees, etc.? or since this is fractional property, do i have to proportion these fees. currently the way i see this, is i used the property for 2 weeks... so in turn out of 13 weeks total only 84.6% of the property was available as a rental property (11 weeks) vs. vacation property (2 weeks). any indication on the proper direction on this would be greatly appreciated. thank you. (filing taxes in canada).

Rental income and expense is reported on Form T776, Statement of Real Estate http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/t776/README.html Income (loss) is transferred to line 126 of your return Your method of apportioning expenses is correct. Normally. even though the property is _available_ to rent for 11/13 weeks, since you are using it as part personal use, you can only deduct the portion of expenses directly associated with contracted rental. This is to say, if it available for 11 weeks, but only rents for 7, you can only deduct 7/13 of the direct expenses for that year (utilities, insurance, mortgage interest, condo fees, taxes), plus all of management expenses, since this is an expense you would not have if you were not renting it out. However, since you have designated the use in writing to the mgmt company, all 11/13 weeks of expense are allowable. Note that "you cannot claim the expenses for renting part of your property if you have no reasonable expectation of making a profit." You can "also claim capital cost allowance (CCA) on the rented part of the property if it does not create or increase a rental loss". See Guide T4036 Rental Income http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tg/t4036/README.html

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In declaring rental income from my principal residence parking spot can i deduct a portion of my mortgage interest, property taxes and condo fees as is done with whole rental investment properties ? thanks for the answers so far but i am in canada so need cra not irs rules and would indeed appreciate specifics as to pro-rating by rental percentage or square footage and any depreciation type concerns on re-sale, thanks!

Yes, you can do so. The appropriate pro-ration would be the percentage of rents you receive to what your entire unit would be rented for. Thus, if you could rent the entire condo for $1000 per month, and you get $50 for the parking space. you would be fairly allowed to deduct 5% of such costs against the rental income of $50. Consult a tax professional regarding what you plan to do. There are also depreciation issues involved in 'rentals'. Even if you do not claim any depreciation costs in your scenario, the IRS may well require you to claim such as 'income' in the future, when you sell the property. Yes, I know it sounds silly, but them's the rules. Check it our carefully.

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Here is my situation- i would really appreciate some advice. i am a first time landlord on a 2 story, 3 bedroom/2.5 bathroom condo, approximately 1400 square feet. our tenants just finished their 1 year lease this week and i have 21 days under ca law to return the deposit. there are some issues however and i am wondering what i am entitled to deduct from her $1000 security deposit and for how much for each issue? 1) downstairs wood laminate flooring - not cleaned 2) missing mailbox key (spoke to post office and they said it would be $50 to redo the locks) 3) inside of oven did not seem to be cleaned 4) sub par paint work - paint on door frames, baseboards, etc... (her family owns a handyman business and we allowed her to repaint all our walls & ceiling with materials we provided for $1000 deduction from her initial rent payment- but we never saw the finished work til now after they have moved out. they did a pretty poor job. doors & baseboards were not included but it looks like they did not tape up upstairs so there is peach paint around the door frames & baseboards and uneven paint coverage on the walls) 5) missing patio furniture (1 round glass table + 4 plastic chairs - i probably paid about $50 for the set when i bought it new) 6) missing storage cabinets (probably paid $50 for them new) 7) missing floor lamp (probably paid $15 for it new) i informed her of the missing items and she said her family may have just taken everything while moving unknowingly and if she locates them, she will return them by placing them on our back patio (open side gate). how long should i give her to return these items? the last issue is that in the last 6 months, her rent has been late 5 of those months. i have never collected the late fees from her although in the lease agreement it states that every day it is late is $10. for november, she moved out on the 10th. rent is due on the 1st, late fees are supposed to commence on the 6th. it is now the 14th and still no rent check has been received. i asked her again about this last payment and she states her father definitely sent the check on the 5th (which would still mean her payment would have arrived late). if i didn't receive the check in the mail by today, they would have to put a stop payment on the check and send me a new one. she seems to think she is not responsible if her check is lost in the mail. what am i entitled to collect on late fees? can they be deducted from the security deposit? for future reference, once we get new tenants in the condo, how should i deal with late fees? how should i keep proof of late arrival dates? being a landlord can be such a pain in the butt. :( i would hire a property management company if i had more than one rental but after this first year's experience, i'm not sure i want to deal with the headache of additional tenants. thanks in advance! *edit* unfortunately, i was unaware that ca law required that i send written notification prior to her moving out for the option to do an intial walk-through. although i did come a week prior to move-out to try and show the unit to a prospective tenant and the place was in complete disarray due to her being in the middle of packing. she refused me entry during the month of october which certainly hindered my ability to try and find new tenants in a timely manner as well. in hindsight, i was too nice and accommodating during the lease period. i should have insisted on inspecting the paint job. we came a month later for a work receipt for tax reasons and it still was not finished and i gave them the benefit of the doubt that it would be fine.they promised an awesome job since they wanted to make sure the placed looked nice since they were living in it. apparently, she was unhappy with the color i chose which she brought up today during our phone conversation and then hung up on me. rude

www.dca.ca.gov has info that might be useful. If she was there for only a year you can charge her 1/2 of what it is going to cost to repaint the place . As for the missing key as long as you have a receipt from the post office showing it cost $50 to re-key the lock you can charge her the $50. As for the missing stuff you would have to charge her a depreciated value unless the item was brand new when she moved in. You can always hire someone to come in and clean the floor and oven make sure you get a receipt from them. Now as for late fee's and unpaid rent you can also deduct this from her security deposit. when you sit down to write out her itemized list just put the date and amount. As for the next tenants just keep track of when they paid even though my tenant writes her check with the 1st on it I put it in my system as received on the 2nd or 3rd whenever it's in my box is the day I put. Since she lives next door she just puts it in my mail box.