Tax Relief for Home Sellers

In 1997, American householders received some large tax relief. The Taxpayer Relief Act provided homeowners the advantage of not including the gain on the purchase of their houses within broad limits. The old guidelines merely allowed homeowners over the age of fifty five to defer the gain on the selling of their homes by rolling it in to the purchase of the brand new residence. Furthermore, this deferral was only available once per homeowner; but the new law has successfully swept these restrictions away and provided much more liberal tax relief. Today, homeowners who qualify may use this exemption repeatedly. Obviously, this particular act has saved numerous homeowners hundreds and hundreds of dollars in taxes, and additionally supplied an actual shot in the arm to the real estate industry.

However there are certain provisions that must be met so that you can qualify for this specific exemption. The first circumstance is just that the house being sold must be your primary residence, and not a vacation home or rental residence. This clause is actually broken down in to two components:

1. The possession test - the dealers must have possessed the property for two out of the last 5 years prior to the sale of the house. For example, if the sellers rented the home for 4 years after which purchased it a year prior to the sale, then they don't qualify for the tax relief upon transaction.

2. The use test - to get the granted tax relief, the sellers should have actually lived in the residence for a minimum of 2 out of the prior five years prior to the date of the transaction. The 2 years do not have to be contiguous; they could be chronologically split up in any way, so long as the overall time spent in the house is equal to a minimum of two years.

Furthermore, the real quantity of the exemption does have a restriction. Solitary tax payers can don't include up to $250,000 on the gain of their houses, while joint filers can exclude twice that amount, as much as $500,000. For anyone, this is substantial tax relief. But this money does not have to be used to buy an additional home; it can now be utilized for whatever the vendor wishes. About the only other real constraint for this exclusion is that it could only be used by tax payers as soon as every two years.