Home Improvement Time on April, 2024: Can you teach me about tax refund for home improvement.?

April, 2024 is Home Improvement Time 2024.

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Home improvements, with the exception of some limited deductions/credits for energy efficiency upgrades are not tax deductible. So you get no benefit when filing taxes.

However, home improvements are added into the base cost of your house which reduces possible capital gains taxes when you sell. For example, you buy a house for $100,000, make $50,000 in home improvements and sell for $200,000. Without the improvements, the cap gains is sale price minus buy price or $200,000 - $100,000 = $100,000. But with the home improvements added in, your base price becomes the $100,000 buy price plus $50,000 improvements or $150,000 which lowers the capital gains to $50,000.

Note however, that there is a $250,000 individual capital gains exemption for selling a house ($500,000 for a couple), so to take advantage of any of the improvements, your house would have had to increase in price at least $250,000/$500,000.

Can I deduct home improvement expenses?

Home improvements can be deducted on a rental or investment property.

If a house is your primary residence (if you are a sole or part owner) home improvements can be deducted, if they are made withing 6 months prior to the sale of the home (you are improving it for sale.)

If you are not part owner, only the owner can claim deductions.

If the house is not sold withing 6 months after improvements (the improvements were done just to improve) nobody can deduct.

Do home improvements really add value?

Those home improvement shows are such hype. They take old dumps that really should be bulldozed and practically rebuild the house. Indeed a new home could be built for what they so often waste on "propping" up an old piece of garbage.

Sure, people will come out and appraise it for more, not because it actually is better but because taxing entities want more tax money.

Those shows are not realistic about the costs of their renovations either. It's just the usual game of hyping by renovators and real estate shylocks to make people believe that real estate is worth far more than it actually is. Unfortunately, this ilk has gained such control of the real estate market that homes don't sell for their actual worth but for their limited supply (in other words, there is a very very limited amount of homes sold at actual worth because these people have gained control of the market and inflate the price any way they can). It'd be better to build from the ground up.

The only way to really pay yourself back for home improvements is to do it yourself to keep costs way down.