How to Leverage Real Estate to Save Money on Taxes

Thank all of you for, uh, showing up to today's webinar. Uh, this will be recorded, so if you're not able to stay for the whole thing, then definitely just feel free to jump off at any time. I'll email you most likely tomorrow or the following day with a recap and a recording of this webinar. So number one, if you're not familiar with me, my name is Chris. I'm the operations manager here at Club Capital. Been here for the past, I want to say, like 4 years and held multiple positions. And today I'm being joined by David Barrett. Uh, he is with the CSSI, uh, which essentially they specialize in doing cost segregation studies. And today he's going to show you what that is and how you can utilize real estate to essentially accelerate depreciation and get huge tax cuts, benefits, essentially this year, the following, whenever you choose to use them. So without further ado, David, they're all yours.

Thank you, Christopher. And thank you, those of you that are joining us. This hopefully this overview is pretty comprehensive in terms of what cost segregation is and how it can benefit you. And again, We'll just get started. Great. Thanks for forwarding this after so they can review it further. So, whoops, went too far. Here we go. So many people know about the financial benefits of owning residential rental real estate, multifamily, as well as office buildings. Cash flow with the ability to raise rents, other people paying down your loan, the property value appreciating. And many people know about the tax-deferring strategy of a 1031 exchange. But there's another big tax-deferring strategy with real estate that's lesser known, and it's called cost segregation. I hope to give you an overview that's easy to understand. So you may have heard this term: it's not what you make, it's what you keep. As hard as you work, you want to try to keep as much as you can and not, not pay as much taxes if you can legally do so. Cost segregation is a depreciation method that began about 20 years ago. It can be used only on income-producing properties. It cannot be, you know, where you lay your head on your pillow at night. It has to be— you have to be getting income out of that building in order to do a cost segregation strategy of accelerated depreciation. Historically, only straight-line method was available where you depreciate the building evenly over 27 or 39 years, depending on whether people live in it monthly for rent, where you depreciate the building, you take 1/27th of the value of the building each year as a deduction. If people pay you monthly rent, if it's a commercial building like you have your insurance business in it, you are depreciating that property as a commercial property over 39 years by, you know, dividing that number for 39 years. That's, that's the only depreciation method available up until about 20 years ago. And then they came up with cost segregation, which was originally only used for new construction. But in 2017, it was able to be applied to existing buildings as well. And the tax— the tax-deferring benefits of cost segregation, the items that we find in your building can be depreciated a lot faster. 5-year or 15-year period of time for maybe what you would normally depreciate faster in 5 years or 15 years. Actually, you can now depreciate all at once on what's called 5 and 15-year components, which we'll explain. This is a little bit confusing, so please stay with me. This is— I'm sorry, let me go back to tax caps. You don't care about the tax law. Let me just go back to this here. Here is a list of components that can be accelerated for depreciation per the current tax code. This is not everything. These are just some of the common items. And if you think about it, each of these items normally would last about 5 years, especially carpet, flooring, cabinets, shelving. But all of these are considered 5-year property fixtures, fireplaces, baseboard and crown molding, paint, window treatments, mini blinds, accent interior lighting, ceiling fans, security system, interiors, decor, etc. You can think about the 5-year property as interior property that just is everything beyond the drywall. I don't know how, you know, if you have your shell of your building with your basic building, it's anything else you have in that building that's attached that the current tax law allows you to accelerate for depreciation and faster deductions. 15-year property is typically considered exterior. And some of those components, if the— if you're beside a hill and, you know, they had to do some special draining, the excavation of the parking lot with that drain and how big that pipe is, that those construction components can be accelerated faster. Parking lots, sidewalks, curbs, driveway, landscaping, fencing, gates, mailboxes, swimming pools, basketball, tennis courts, light poles, fire hydrants, retaining walls. Basically anything, anything exterior of the building that's above just the land. Basically got your dirt, anything else above it. Basically, if it's outside the building, that's called a 5, 15-year property. So here's an analogy that explains it fairly easily. You can take your entire building like a hamburger, Big Mac, and, and divide it by 27 or 27 or 39 years, depending on whether people pay monthly rent and live there, which would be 27.5. Any other building is a 39-year property and you can divide it evenly and take it as a straight-line depreciation. However, people my age will probably remember, too. All beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles. You know, that jingle everybody was ingrained in their head from my generation. But cost segregation is basically taking that same Big Mac and breaking it down into all the pieces and parts. And let's say the cheese and the pickles and the onions and the sesame seed bun get better tax treatment. That's kind of what we're doing, if you can follow that. That simple analogy. Um, and basically this is what we're paid to do. Um, if you can imagine having somebody visit the property for about an hour, taking photographs, exterior, interior of basically the entire property, and then sending those photographs to engineers and building analysts who know behind the drywall how much copper is in the, uh, the wiring, how much plumbing has to go to that bathroom from basically we have building engineers that are working with accounting people that understand which items are 5-year, which it says at the very top here, and then— excuse me, right here, 5-year and then 15-year. We're simply identifying, like we said, the 5-year property cabinets, molding, fireplaces, door guards, all of these items qualify as 5-year property. This amount down here, once it was totaled, Normally you would get that as an accelerated deduction over 5 years. However, the current tax law has changed and you get this now all upfront as bonus depreciation. Instead of, instead of getting all of these items over 5 years, you can take this as $127,000 additional write-off whenever you decide to do a study of the property and the 15-year property, same thing, parking lot, sidewalks, etc. There's an additional $30,000 that we valued on that property that could be accelerated traditionally. Excuse me, I should say before 2017, you would take this $30,000 number and you could take it evenly over 15 years, which would be a couple grand a year, although there is some graduated accelerated. But still, it has to be taken over 15 years. In the past, as of 2017, with the current tax law, both the 5-year and the 15-year property are able to be accelerated on day one. So, so you're getting in this particular example, $150,000 of additional depreciation in a 35% tax bracket. That's a $50,000 income tax savings by simply segregating out all the parts and pieces of the building that do qualify for faster depreciation. Now, what's on the bottom here is the 27.5-year. These are all the items that we've identified, again, down to the penny, that the tax law does not allow to be accelerated. These are your building systems, your roofing system, foundation, basically the structure of the building. You can look at it that way. But these items here we've identified with the tax law. We put a value down to the penny so they can be depreciated faster. As a deduction. Hopefully that's clear. This is actually what we're paid to do. We're paid to do this, this document to get to Club Capital so that they can then implement those numbers into your tax return so that you can defer taxes now and be able to, to use that money today for other investments. By the way, well, we're going to get to that. So the original purchase of this mixed-use commercial retail building, this is, this is an estimate. This is what we would prepare for you if you'd like to see what your tax benefit looks like. For this particular client, the land, the land value is not depreciated. So this commercial building was probably purchased for $2.3 million. I don't know. Their CPA, just like Club Capital, would tell us what the basis of the building is. They'll tell us to remove a certain amount for land and the remaining amount is this number. So we're depreciating and doing an analysis on the value of the building minus the land. And that's what this number is. This particular property was purchased in August of 2019. So with, with this, this is a commercial building. That's why it's depreciated over 39 years. Oops, sorry. I thought I could highlight that and I clicked. So anyhow, if you divide this number by 39, you're going to get a certain annual deduction. And this is on this chart, it's accumulated. We're talking to this client about their opportunity on this building that was purchased in August of 2019, and we're forecasting what they've— what the benefit would be. So what we have to do is look at the 39-year depreciation method and it's prorated. So in, in 2019, they got months or half the year, let's say, of 2019 deductions. And then in '20 and 2021, we're, we're estimating that their depreciation with straight line would be $110,000 when they filed in 2021 in a couple of weeks. Cost segregation, however, is a lot more advantageous for immediate deductions. We believe there's $416,000 of additional depreciation— excuse me, of cost segregation depreciation that could be taken. The difference between this number this number and this number is the opportunity. This would be the reason to consider doing a study. Our prediction, our prediction was over $300,000 of additional depreciation for them in a 40% tax bracket. This customer told us then his income tax or her income tax savings would be $122,000 of income tax, if that is clear. So we do no, no-cost estimates just to find out how much taxes can be deferred. And this is a kind of a sample of what that looks like. This is a really good diagram just to kind of explain the concept with cost segregation, which is the red line. You're getting a lot of great tax benefits in the early years with cost segregation, but because you're taking that depreciation faster and then the blue line is the straight-line depreciation, what you're going to notice is that you're going to have a little bit less depreciation each year going forward because you're taking some of the depreciation you would get in the future and you're frontloading it. I believe the next slide will make this more clear. Yeah, for this particular client, the same one again, his building was $1.8 million. Most of his tax benefit was in the interior product, although there was some benefit with the exterior product as well. But what I wanted to point out here is that with this is everything here, 5, 7— don't ask me what 7-year is, it's very rare— 5, 7, and 15-year property and the 39-year structural building. All of the cost segregation is totaled here in this column. And you'll see that $416,000 deduction that was able to be taken right away. But you'll also see that there's still $38,000 of depreciation this client can still take as a deduction in the future tax years of property ownership. If you compare the cost segregation method to straight-line depreciation, which is the whole building taken in 39 years, you'll see these columns are exactly the same because 39 and the total of everything is still 39. So these are the same columns. But if you compare this, this category and this category, what you're going to notice is in the future years of ownership of your property, you're going to have— it looks like about $8,000 of less write-off each year. In tax years going forward, because what we're simply doing is frontloading them and taking them here. Again, it's the same depreciation either way you do it. You're simply getting the tax benefits faster with cost segregation. I hope that's, that's clear. This is interesting. This is, this is the exact same property that did a lot of renovation work. And I think it's interesting he spent actually more than this on the construction, but the porta-potties on the Excel spreadsheet cannot for the construction workers that cannot be accelerated as a deduction. But anyhow, since he bought it in December of 2020— excuse me, he did his renovation and it was completed in December of 2021. He can do the 39-year straight-line depreciation, but it's, it's prorated. So he only gets 1 month of the 12 months of the 1/39. So, yes, it's only a, you know, $1,400 deduction with straight-line depreciation. However, with cost segregation, of the renovation work that he did, we found an additional $359,000 of depreciation that could be taken immediately for this tax year. And the difference between this number and this number is his benefit. Again, by simply doing cost seg now, he would get an additional $357,000 write-off, which would save him $143,000. And then not to get into too many details, but when you do a renovation, if you're replacing, you know, carpet, which is common, stuff like that, when we cost segregate the original building, we already know the size of the room. So when that carpet goes in the trash, the old carpet that was purchased with the original building, there's value to what's going in the trash. By looking at his construction cost documents, a big Excel document of everything he did, we could see how much carpet was purchased, we could see how much then was thrown out. So we predicted for him $236,000 in the value of the components thrown in the trash, which is commonly missed as a deduction. So we try to, we try to estimate a pad, a partial asset disposition. There's some unique situations that require that to be approved, but we're looking at all tax opportunities for you on your building. But anyhow, in the renovation, by accelerating the components placed into service with the construction renovation, there's $143,000 of tax savings with what was thrown in the trash that needs to come off the basis of the building and expensed per the, the repair regulations. There's almost another $95,000 there as well. So this $1.3 million in renovation through our efforts was able to, to result in $237,000 of additional income tax deferral, income tax savings. And I'll skip some of this. I've already shown those examples. Yeah, let me, let me talk about this. I'm going to step back. I hope hopefully now you kind of know what we do, but let's step, step back philosophically and talk about, you know, how does this really benefit you? Because some, some tax advisors are not as progressive, I would say, as Club Capital. I've, I've explained this to other, other real estate owners and they've gone to their CPA who's, who's basically told them, I don't know why you, why you would do that. All the— it's true, all the depreciation deductions you take now in the current tax year will be recaptured when you— whenever you sell that building. So the CPA, I think, not helping their client, will sometimes tell the client, hey, yeah, you're getting a great deduction now, but when you sell the building, it gets reversed out of your gains anyway. However, if you're keeping this— however, if you're keeping the building for 3 to 5+ years, the value in the 5-year property that we've identified, if you sell the— if you basically with cost segregation, you need to know you're not flipping the property. You need to be pretty confident that you are going to keep the property, we say, from 3 to 5+ years. And the reason for that is if we can defer $50,000, $100,000 or more of income taxes this year, And if you can take that money and invest it into something else for the next 3 to 5 years, it doesn't have to be real estate, although oftentimes it is real estate with the people I work with. But I hear a lot of my clients now concerned about inflation. So they're taking these tax savings we're providing and using that money to invest in gold, silver, oil stocks, precious metal mining stocks, what have you, cryptocurrency, whatever you invest your money in that you believe in. Basically, cost segregation can be a way that you can free up capital for other investments. And I typed this up, which is kind of my thoughts on cost segregation in an— as an inflation strategy within real estate. And I'm just going to read it. The real— the real strategy with cost segregation is not just deferring taxes. Cost segregation allows you to pull forward specific fixed dollar depreciation deductions that you could be taking over the next 27 or 39 years to create thousands of dollars in tax savings now. The real strategy is then investing those thousands of dollars immediately into another asset that will grow to become much more valuable than those same straight-line depreciations. If you took them in the future, valued in deflating dollars, the US dollar has been losing value recently even faster than before. Real estate is an inflation strategy as you're buying something tangible that will hold its value as the dollar continues to fall. And cost segregation is an inflation strategy within, within real estate that turns deflating dollars into tax savings now to acquire other tangible assets. Most of my clients, like I said, roll their tax savings into down payments on other real estate. However, more recently I've heard them talk about investing in precious metals mining. So I already said that. Yeah, what you invest in is up to you. Cost segregation simply frees up funds to make this happen. And over the next 20 to 30 years, let's say you keep the building and give it to your children. I don't know. I mean, you, you for $50,000 or $100,000 can have another asset growing over that length of time to become something of real value. And again, this is the real strategy with cost segregation. It's understanding the time value of money. Yes, if you, if you do cost segregation on a property this year and you sell it next year, you've made a mistake because you paid us for something that was really no benefit to you at all. But if you know you're going to keep the property, we would say 3 to 5+ years, you're going to be able to really maximize the time that you have in that, in that with that other investment that you'll use your tax savings on. And you're also giving enough time for that 5-year property, which is most of your deductions, to also depreciate. So when, when there is recapture, when you sell that building in 3 to 5+ years, there's less to recapture out of your gains for taxes. I hope that makes sense. And again, well, there will be time for questions, so we'll come back to that. So with cost segregation, the property is recommended to be kept for at least 3 years. Again, you're not— you don't do this on a property you think you're going to flip. A property where the depreciable basis is under $200,000 may not be cost effective, but we can check. Again, there's no cost for us to do a prediction analysis. Again, this depreciable basis is the value of your building after the land has been removed. I'm in Southern California, so I rarely see a property under $200K. But if you're in the Midwest or, you know, anywhere else in the country, just understand on your depreciation schedule, if, if you're depreciating, you'll see 27 years, you'll see 39 years on there, usually on your depreciation schedule. And then there'll be a— it'll say land, certain value, and it'll say building or land improvements, a certain value. That building land improvement number on your last tax return should be over $200 grand. For this to really actually work for you. Cost segregation can be used within 1031 exchanges. Yes, they can. Oh, the study— the fees for our studies are also tax deductible. Actually, cost segregation studies have the best benefit on properties when they are initially acquired and for several years thereafter. Properties purchased up to 10 years ago may also benefit but they have to be very expensive properties, you know, several million dollars or more where it might pan out. Again, we'll do an estimate of a conservative estimate before advising on— before you and Club Capital can decide whether it makes sense on that property. That's between you and your tax professional. My job is to get an accurate estimate and execute if in fact you and your tax pro are interested in moving forward. Again, there's no cost to have CSI review any property with our no-cost prediction analysis, but But just know after 10 years it's probably not going to work. I would say the first 5 years of ownership is great if you're able to actually do a cost seg study the first year that you own the property before it gets on. If, if you can get a cost seg study done before your property that was recently purchased is put into your tax return, then that eliminates the 3115 change of accounting form, which creates a little bit less expense for you with the study. But I wouldn't worry about it if you had a property in the last, I'd say, 7 years that you acquired that was over, you know, $200K in basis. I would run the estimate and consider it. So, oh yeah, this is interesting. U.S. There's, there's 9 different ways to do cost segregation. U.S. authorities have recommended as the number one method an engineering-based cost segregation company. And that's the exact method that we use. A little bit of history. We've never had any of of our results reversed. Now we've done over 30,000 studies in the last 20 years and we've never had any of our calculations reversed. We always create these tax deferments for our clients and we've never triggered an audit. Interestingly enough, out of 30,000 studies, we've only been involved in 15 audits according to the COO. When, when we went to our national meeting, he told us, yeah, we've only been involved in 15 audits. So cost segregation is very commonly done. It's not a red flag. You should know that. And then secondly, more importantly, even after those 15 audits, when the IRS looked at all of our calculations down to the penny, they reaffirmed our methodology. They did not have us change any of our calculations. Our company's batting 100%, 100% on all the 30,000 studies we've done. In each case, there was no reason for the audit. Our study happened to be there. They— because they did an amended return. I'm sorry, those 15 audits were primarily on amended returns. So that's what triggered them. Anyhow, over nearly 20 years, we've had only had phone calls with questions and those audits. So anyhow, to remove any concerns regarding this for our clients, we contractually promise to defend our results of a study at no cost if they're ever challenged. So we're going to be there to assist you and Club Capital if there is ever an audit, which is actually very unlikely. And then I throw this in there just because I saw it in the news and I thought it was crazy. Oh my gosh. In March of this past year, the largest increase in funding for the IRS ever, and $5.4 billion of it's going into enforcement, which means the IRS can beef up its criminal. There's going to be a lot more audits coming forward just based on 87,000 new IRS agents that are supposed to now handle carry guns. I have, I have some problems with that as an American, to be honest with you. But that's another topic. Anyhow, that's the— let's see, it took me about 25 minutes. So yeah, I hopefully that was clear and concise. Let me, uh, I see some questions in the chat, uh, or something. Let's see. Hi everyone, can we write questions in the chat? Oh, there we go.

Speak now, by the way.

What's that?

I'm saying like if any of our participants have questions and they want to just express them, press them.

Yeah, yeah. Preston, if you want to talk, go ahead. Hey, how are you, David? Thank you. This is, this is very— any limitations on the single family rentals or this can be done for single family? Oh yeah. As the only criteria, Preston, is that the property has to be an income property. I just studied a Simi Valley— well, I just studied a condominium around the corner from me and it had a really good return because there's no 15-year property. All the exterior is owned by the condo association, but the interior had I think 20% of that building was able to be— something like 20% was able to be depreciated right away. So yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a condo, duplex, single-family home, apartment, commercial, self-storage, motel, any, any income property can be cost segregated. Can you go from single line to cost segregation midstream? Yes, that's the 3115 that I mentioned earlier. If you've been doing straight-line depreciation for several years or even one year, you just simply have to tell the IRS that you're going to now switch to the cost segregation method and we can prepare that form for Club Capital as part of our, our relationship for doing the study. Yeah, if planning to continue holdings with 1031, If planning to continue real estate holdings with 1031, can you go beyond 10 years? Yeah, let me clarify. Any property, whether it was a 1031 or not, probably is going to be worth considering a cost segregation study within, say, 7 years of ownership. Once you get beyond 7 years, the return might not make sense. If you're asking me about a property, Preston, that you've held already for 15 years that was part of a 1031, there would— I don't think there would be a reason to cost segregate that property. Now, if you do a 1031 and you roll all of those gains into another property, I would encourage you with that new property to call us immediately for estimate on that property, if that's clear. Some clients will 1031 for life and then leave in real estate. Yeah, I know. I had a client that built a $25 million building here locally and we cost segregated the whole project. And very similarly, about 20% of the— of that 5-story building was able to be accelerated for depreciation right away. He got a $5 million deduction in his bracket, tax bracket. It's over $1.5 million of income tax deferral, income tax savings. And he's the one that told me— and this is, this is something I may have said on this call— I now say to different people, yeah, this is— cost segregation is a way to get an interest-free loan from the government. And that's what he told me. He goes, yeah, I like it. I get like that million-dollar-plus, you know, interest-free loan from the government. And the fact that it comes from the IRS makes it even better, he said. And then he said, and the beautiful thing is I'm not supposed to pay it back till I sell the building. And then he said, I'm never selling this building. So, you know, so I think that addresses your comment, too. Let's see. Can accelerated depreciation be carried forward if I don't have much tax? Yes. Sorry. Thank you. That's a great question. Yeah. If you— if we can create a $100,000 additional deduction for you in a tax year and if in fact, you know, the income on that rental properties was 80 grand, that extra 20 grand deduction does roll forward to the next tax year. Yes, absolutely.

Oops, looks like that might be it for questions. If you do have any other questions, definitely feel free to reach out to me or to Dave. He left his information right there. Yeah, um, other than that, thank you, Dave, for the presentation.

Yeah, hopefully that was short and sweet. Yeah, hopefully that was short and sweet, and I apologize for some of the the technical issues to begin with. Thank you, Preston, or thank you, Christopher, for helping with that. And thank you, the rest of you, for joining us. Yeah, reach out for any questions. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that, Preston. Yeah, hopefully it was informative. I try to keep it short and sweet, not to get into too much of the minutia. But the bottom line is, if you're going to— if you— if you bought a building in the last 5 or 7 years, or if you bought a building for several million dollars or more in the last 10 years, allow us to do a prediction analysis so you'll know what your tax benefit is. And each building is different in pricing. Nobody asked me what our prices are, and I'm glad because I don't set the pricing. I send the diagrams of your building and an appraisal, if you have one, to corporate, and square footage and all that. They look at your building, they determine how much time it takes and the size of each room and everything to come up with, uh, how much time it would take them to actually do the study. So they come back with that price for you to consider. And as long as you know you're keeping that property property for 3 to 5+ years, I personally don't know why you wouldn't want to get some tax deferral now to have more money on hand to invest in other assets. That's the strategy. And again, thank you so much for the opportunity, Preston. I keep saying Preston. Thank you for the opportunity, Christopher. Tell Mike I said hello. And any, any of you that are with State Farm, you may know Charles Allison. We did a couple of his buildings and helped him tremendously. And he's the one that helped me create this relationship with Club Capital. And I'm sure Charles Allison would be happy to share his results if you're with State Farm, which I think a lot of customers of Club Capital are with. So anyhow, thank you so much. Hope you guys are having a great day. We'll talk again soon, hopefully. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Have a great day.

You too. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.