Can I expense/depreciate the appliances I bought in 2021 for my 2022 rental tax deduction?

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@wleuter wrote:

@Opus 17 

Thanks for your answer.

Let's say I also bought new appliances in 2022 after my rental is over at the end of July, 2022, then I rented my house again from Jan, 2023.

Can I depreciate these new appliances for 2022's tax return (But I bought them after the rental was over) or 2023's tax return (But I bought them in 2022)?

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So, we need to make a distinction, as @Anonymous_ indicated before, on whether this is a long term rental or a vacation rental.  Consider three hypotheticals.

A. You planned to rent out long term.  Your first tenant left after 6 months, and you had second thoughts, so you moved back into the home for personal use, and made some improvements and upgrades for personal use.  Then you thought your options over again, and decided to try making the home a long term rental again.  You have a tenant with a year lease and you plan to continue indefinitely.

B. You plan to rent the home for 6 months or so every year, taking the home back for personal use in between.  It might be a vacation home, or an AirBnB situation, or something similar, but it isn't intended to be a long term rental to the same tenant.

C. You planned to rent out long term.  Your first tenant left after 6 months, so you took the opportunity while the home was vacant to make some improvements to make it a better rental property.  Although you might have lived there temporarily while making the improvements, you kept your main home someplace else.  The home was always a "rental" from the first tenant, even though it was temporarily unavailable to rent due to improvements.

The timing and treatment of improvements, deprecation, and so on will follow different rules depending on which scenario is closest to what you are doing.