A Blog About Tax Savings for Building Owners

Month: April 2023

Maximizing Tax Savings and Balancing Hotel Renovations: Strategies for Property Owners and Tax Professionals

Hotel renovations - property improvement plans. Brands push hotel owners to make renovations to their properties. Partial asset disposition is an excellent tax savings strategy for hotel owners making renovations and improvements.

Now that we are well beyond the difficulties of the Covid-19 pandemic, hotel brands are once again starting to push on the hotel owners to make improvements to their buildings. Are the PIPs (property improvement plans) still in place? Since many hotels didn’t have many customers for a while during the long duration of the pandemic, their furnishings as well as other items such as carpets and bathrooms may not have seen the wear and tear that they would have. Consequently, plans to change those out have been pushed out. But the time is soon coming to make those improvements.

With all the new hotels that continue to be built, having a hotel that looks dated both in terms of the interior finishes as well as the furnishings is going to be a detriment to business success. Hotel News Now has an excellent article on the ongoing PIP discussions hotel owners are having with the brands they represent.

This is also a reminder that when hotels are doing these renovations that they should also be looking at doing a partial asset disposition study (PAD). These are done when the renovations are more than $100,000 which nearly every renovation of a hotel will certainly hit. Partial asset disposition allows for the owner to take a tax deduction in the year in which the renovation was done. It’s a use it or lose it tax deduction. Since you are putting new material into your building and throwing out the old, we do the calculations as to what you are throwing out. There is basis that is still on your books and with our study, you can deduct that off your books since you’ve removed it from the building. Not only do you get a tax deduction but since it’s off your books, you don’t have to pay recapture tax on it when you go to sell the building.

Every project varies depending upon the kind of work done and how long you’ve own the building, but it’s reasonable to expect that you might see a tax deduction of 15-20% of the improvement amount. So for example, let’s stay you are planning a $500,000 improvement. By studying that work effort and doing a partial asset disposition, PAD, you might see a $75,000 – $100,000 +/- deduction that year on your taxes. If you are paying 32% Federal tax rate, that’s $24,000 – $32,000 in tax savings. These studies tend not to cost much. If you have already done a cost segregation study on your building then this might only cost you another $3,000 – $5,000 to do. That cost is an expense of course. If you need to do cost segregation, that will increase the overall cost for as you’ll have to do a cost segregation study but a cost seg study will likely yield another massive tax deduction for you in addition to what is noted above.

If you own a hotel and you are planning to do renovations and would like to discuss, please give me a call. If you did renovations in 2022 and have filed an extended tax return, there is still time to do a partial asset disposition and take advantage of this great tax deduction. Once you’ve filed your taxes for the year in which the work was done, you cannot amend to go back and take this deduction. It truly is use it or lose it. Most lose it because they are not aware of this. I work all over the U.S. and can help you on a project anywhere in all 50 states in the U.S. John Murphy 864-276-1448.

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John Murphy Cost Segregation Services, Inc. "Unlocking enefits: Why Property and Casualty Insurance Agents Should Offer Cost Segregation to Clients"

NR Investments of Miami to Revitalize Greenville with Gateway Project Near Bon Secours: Abandoned Memorial Auditorium Site to Undergo Redevelopment

Renderings by Johnston Design Group and SeamonWhiteside – Upstate Business Journal

The area in and around Bon Secours Wellness Arena has been lacking for years. Now there are a couple of projects that are in the works that will transform the area into an entertainment destination and will be a great complement to Bon Secours.

Miami-based NR Investments looked at the difficult to development triangle location of the former Greenville Memorial Auditorium site. This is not an easy project. What they are proposing looks terrific and I believe will be a great addition to Greenville, SC and will help revitalize this area.

The project has not been fully approved yet. The Design Review Board has asked for a few changes and pushed this out to the June timeframe. It seems like this will get approved once those accommodations have been made.

Below is a short video from the NR Investments partner discussing the site.

Smashburger Experiments with Virtual Drive-thru Lanes…aka Pick Up Windows

Smashburger
Photo: Smashburger / QSR Magaine

Post pandemic changes continue to take root in the commercial real estate space and especially with restaurants. It was inevitable that given the scare the American people were put through with the Covid hysteria that we’d see an increase in drive-thrus and pick up windows. Pick up windows have long been a thing in beach towns and resorts but they are now making their way to every day suburban America.

Smashburger is testing out virtual lanes whereby they create some space in their stores to cut out a pick up window. Customers place their orders on their app and pay for it electronically. They then just walk up and pick up their order. Panera does a lot of this as do other restaurants, but you have to go into their stores to get the food. That’s fine now, but for those looking to shave 30 seconds off their lives, they may like the pick up windows. This allows Smashburger to provide some additional convenience for customers without needing the real estate to double or triple their drive-thrus which of course also costs a significant amount of money.

Cost Segregation for Starbucks Buildings

Recently I received a call from someone inquiring as to whether or not Starbucks were good for cost segregation. Yes, they are excellent for cost segregation because they typically have large parking lots (15 year land improvements) and excellent interior finishing which a lot of that ends up being identified as 5 year class life property.

Here’s a good example. Let’s say this Starbucks was purchased for $2.5 million and the land was worth $500,000. Since the land cannot be depreciated, that must be deducted so we come up with a basis of $2,000,000 for the building. Every building is different but for the sake of understanding how cost segregation can help an owner of a Starbucks building let’s look at how this breaks down.

A cost segregation study is going to identify and reclassify all the building components as well as segregate the land improvements. So with this property, let’s stay 17% was identified at 5 year class life property. That would be $340,000. And for the land improvements, let’s say those come in at 20% which would be $400,000. So on a $2 million building, this owner could accelerated $740,000 or 37% of the building cost or basis. Depending upon the year in which this went into service, it could be taken as 100% bonus depreciation (Sept. 27, 2017 – Dec. 31, 2022). If the building went into service in 2023 then it would qualify for 80% bonus depreciation. (Bonus depreciation drops 20% each year until 2027 when it goes to zero or just regular accelerated depreciation).

If the owner is paying federal taxes at say a 35% rate, that would be a tax savings of almost $260,000 in income taxes. These studies would typically cost less than $6,000 which is an expense…so it’s a net of $3,900. That’s an ROI of about 66:1.

If you’d like to have us evaluate your property for cost segregation, please feel free to reach out and I’d be happy to discuss.

John Murphy Cost Segregation Services, Inc. "Unlocking enefits: Why Property and Casualty Insurance Agents Should Offer Cost Segregation to Clients"

Maximizing Your Tax Savings: A Cost Segregation Case Study on a Retail Strip Center

Recently we completed a cost segregation study for the owner of this retail strip center.  I thought it might be helpful for you to see the kinds of results with this kind of asset. (Please note that every building is different and will see a different result…some will perform better than others depending on items like finishings and land improvements like parking lots and landscaping). The owner acquired the building in April 2022. For cost segregation, we deduct the value of the land to come up with the basis or the cost of the building. The basis was $1,125,000.  The owner had also spent $125,000 on tenant improvements (TI) which were all interior improvements.  Because he had purchased the building in April 2022, he would have had a depreciation expense of $18,750. That is straight line depreciation at 39 years. He also could have taken the $125,000 as a depreciation expense without our help as those tenant improvements are considered Qualified Improvement Property (QIP) which has a 15 year class life. Remember in 2022, we had 100% bonus depreciation for any class life under 20 years so the TI’s could be take at 100% depreciation expense. So he could have potentially had a total depreciation expense in 2022 of $143,750.  But he ended up with a significantly larger depreciation expense since he did a cost segregation study.  The results were as follows:

Basis: $1,125,000

5 Year: $62,247.71  /  5.5%

15 Year: $124,021.77 / 11.0%

39 Year: $938,730.52 / 83.5%

In 2022, any class life under 20 years can be taken as 100% bonus depreciation meaning you can depreciate the entire asset in year one rather than waiting 5 or 15 years.  (Starting in 2023, bonus depreciation goes to 80% and then drops 20% each of the following years until it’s zeroed out in 2027 unless Congress changes the law). In this owner’s case, he was able to accelerate or fully depreciate $186,269.48 in year one because of the cost segregation. That combined with the QIP provides a depreciation expense of $311,555.14 in year one.  At a 32% tax rate this would equate to a potential tax savings of $100,000. A study like this generally costs less than $5,500-$6,000. It takes 6-8 weeks to complete and the owner and his/her CPA get a complete breakdown in an easy to use format to apply to the owner’ taxes.

Below is the cost detail on this retail strip center.

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