Summer is here, and so is this year’s crop of summer rentals. In some areas, the market for vacation properties is even perking up after a string of down years.
If you are a vacation-home landlord or thinking of becoming one, it is time to review the tax rules on rental income from second homes.
This isn’t beach reading. Apart from one simple provision, this area is among the messiest in the tax code—”worse than luxury-car depreciation and almost as bad as the alternative minimum tax,” says CPA Douglas Stives of Monmouth University in New Jersey.