AE Tax Advisors

I spend over 2,000 hours a year working in real estate -- showing properties, negotiating deals, managing transactions, and supervising my team. I also own three rental properties that generate depreciation losses every year. For the entire time I have owned those rentals, my old CPA treated the losses as passive and suspended them.

When I talked to AE Tax Advisors, they asked one simple question: how many hours do you spend on real estate activities? When I told them, they said I almost certainly qualify as a Real Estate Professional under IRC Section 469. My old CPA never even asked about my hours. He never mentioned REPS. He just plugged in the K-1 numbers and suspended the losses automatically.

AE Tax documented my real estate hours, confirmed I met both the 750-hour test and the more-than-half test, and applied REPS to my returns. With REPS, my rental depreciation losses are no longer passive -- they offset my commission income dollar for dollar.

They amended the prior three years and released the suspended passive losses, generating refunds totaling $89,000. I literally cried when the first refund check arrived. That money represents years of overpayment caused by my old CPA's ignorance.

AE Tax also performed cost segregation studies on my rentals to accelerate future depreciation, creating even larger losses to offset my commission income going forward. The combined strategy will save me tens of thousands annually for years to come.

If you are a full-time real estate professional with rental properties, ask your CPA about REPS. If they do not know what it is, call AE Tax Advisors immediately.