Income Tax Relief for Home Sellers

In 1997, American property owners received some huge income tax relief. The Taxpayer Relief Act provided property owners the privilege of excluding the gain on the sale of their houses within broad limits. The old rules simply permitted property owners older than fifty five to defer the gain on the selling of their houses by rolling it in to the purchase of a brand new home. Moreover, this deferral was just available once per house owner; but the new law has effectively swept those restrictions away and provided far more liberal income tax relief. Currently, property owners who qualify may use this exclusion repeatedly. Obviously, this act has saved numerous homeowners hundreds and hundreds of dollars in taxes, and also supplied an actual shot in the arm to the real-estate industry.

However there are specific provisions that must be achieved in order to qualify for this special exclusion. The first circumstance is just that the home getting sold must be your main residence, and not a vacation home or rental property. This condition is actually divided into 2 parts:

1. The ownership test - the sellers must have owned the residence for 2 out of the last five years before the sale of the house. For instance, in the event the sellers rented the house for four years after which purchased it a year before the sale, then they do not qualify for the income tax relief upon transaction.

2. The use test - to get the granted income tax relief, the vendors should have really resided in the residence for at least 2 out of the prior 5 years prior to the date of the transaction. The 2 years do not have to be continuous; they could be chronologically split up in every way, so long as the total time spent within the house is equivalent to a minimum of 2 years.

Furthermore, the real quantity of the exemption does possess a limit. Solitary taxpayers could don't include up to $250,000 on the gain of their properties, while joint filers may exclude twice that quantity, up to $500,000. For anybody, this is significant income tax relief. However this cash does not have to be used to purchase an additional home; it can now be utilized for whatever the vendor wishes. Concerning the only additional real constraint for this exclusion is that it can only be utilized by tax payers once every two years.