If you use your home purely as your personal residence, you obtain no taxYou cannot deduct any part of the cost. improvements are treated differently. They can provide tax benefits. Obviously, it's important to understand the difference between a home repair and a home improvement. For tax purposes, a home repair is an activity that keeps your home in good condition, but does not make it substantially better than it was before. Examples of repairs include patching a leaky roof, repainting your home, fixing gutters or floors, fixing leaks, plastering, and A home improvement makes property substantially more valuable and/or long-lived or useful than it was before the improvement. Thus, costs to restore your home to a like-new condition are improvements. include installing a new roof on your home, adding a deck, installing a new heating system, or installing a new foundation. As far as taxes are concerned, repairs to a personal residence are

The only way you can deduct all or part of the cost of home repairs for your residence is if you qualify for the home office deduction or rent out part of the home. You can deduct all or part of home repair costs if you have a business and use a portion of the home as an office for the business. To qualify for the home office deduction you must have a legitimate business and use part of your home exclusively and regularly for the business. If you qualify for this deduction, you can deduct 100% of the cost of repairs you make just to your home office. For example, if you use a bedroom in your home as a home office and pay to replace broken window with a similar window you may deduct the entire cost. Repairs that benefit your entire home are deductible according to the percentage of home office use. For example, if you use 20% of your home as an office, you may deduct 20% of the cost to repair your home heating and air Another way to deduct home repair costs is to rent out a portion of your

This enables you to deduct all or part of the expense as a rental expense. This amount is deducted from the rental income you receive. As with the home office deduction, improvements that repair only the portion of the home being rented can be deducted in full. Repairs that benefit the entire home can be deducted according to the percentage of rental use of the How to Reduce AC Repair Costs Using Simple, Seasonal TestsDon’t you love that feeling when you havewindow ac units how they work the chance to switch over the thermostat from heating to cooling? how many ton ac unit do i needWith spring in the air and winter in the rearview mirror, it’s time to think about the workingwindow ac unit in car condition of your your city home’s air conditioner, both in terms of AC repair or

So what should you do to get the most out of your air conditioner without increasing your monthly energy costs? Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning has a few insights: Turn it up – when you first turn on your air conditioner, take a few days to test out a variety of temperatures to find where you gain the most comfortable. setting your thermostat to a temperature that you may think is a little too high. Then, begin making small incremental changes until you achieve a temperature where you feel comfortable. your thermostat set higher can keep your AC from continuously running, saving you money over the long haul. The longer your air conditioner is working, the more energy you're eating up—and the more money you're spending. Even a degree warmer can make a big impact in the cost of your monthly energy bills, so take time to tinker. Consider the humidity – when you understand how much you can save, it can be tempting to clinch your teeth and deal with the heat by completely turning

off your air conditioner. However, what can easily be overlooked is that air conditioners can help dehumidify your home in addition toSo if humidity is an annoyance for you, be sure to think twice before turning off your air conditioner. Keep it serviced – every time we talk about energy savings and efficiency, the importance of airKeeping your air conditioner serviced makes certain that all the pieces of your system are in working order before you begin using it consistently. Preventative maintenance is one of the most crucial steps to your system working efficiently and keeping major AC repair at bay. Double team – using fans in addition to your air conditioner is a great way to keep your home cooler and keep the air circulating. Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning recommends tag-teaming to allow you to keep your air conditioner from running as often, and that reduced usage can create savings. It might also potentially help

keep your home comfortable enough to raise your thermostat a degree or Keeping your home comfortable when it gets hot in your city isn’t as difficult as it may seem. doesn’t have to be so expensive either. there are a variety of ways that you can maintain or improve your comfort while also attempting to decrease your monthlyWhether you have questions about AC repair and air conditioner service or are curious about energy efficiency, contact your local your city HVAC experts at Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning to learn < Previous March 26, 2015Next >As a homeowner you may be asking, "Do I get a tax break for all the money I've spent fixing up my house?" The answer is, maybe yes, maybe no. But one thing is certain: You'll need to keep track of all those home improvement expenses. When you make a home improvement, such as installing central air conditioning, adding a sunroom or replacing the roof, you can't deduct the cost in the year you spend the money.

But if you keep track of those expenses, they may help you reduce your taxes in the year you sell your house. Money you spend on your home breaks down into two categories, taxwise: the cost of improvements versus the cost of repairs. You add the cost of capital improvements to your tax basis in the house. Your tax basis is the amount you'll subtract from the sales price to determine the amount of your profit. A capital improvement is something that adds value to your home, prolongs its life or adapts it to new uses. There's no laundry list of what qualifies, but you can be sure you'll be able to add the cost of an addition to the house, a swimming pool, a new roof or a new central air-conditioning system. It's not restricted to big-ticket items, though. Adding an extra water heater counts, as does adding storm windows, an intercom, or a home security system. (Certain energy-saving home improvements can also yield tax credits at the time you make them.) The cost of repairs, on the other hand, is not added to your basis.

Fixing a gutter, painting a room or replacing a window pane are examples of repairs rather than improvements. Tracking less critical than in past In the past, it was critical for homeowners to save receipts for anything that could qualify as an improvement. Every dime added to basis was a dime less that the IRS could tax when the house was sold. But now that home-sale profits are tax-free for most owners, there's no guarantee that carefully tracking your basis will pay off. Save when you sell Under current law, the first $250,000 of profit on the sale of your principal residence is tax-free ($500,000 for married couples who file joint returns) if you have owned and lived in the home for at least two of the five years leading up to the sale. When this rule was passed into law, a lot of advisors thought it meant homeowners no longer had to track their basis. After all, how likely was it that someone would score a quarter of a million dollar profit (or a cool half a million) on their home?

But even that large an exclusion may not be enough to shelter the profit in a home that you've owned for many years. So it still pays to keep good records. To determine the size of your profit when you sell, you take everything you paid for the house, the original purchase price, fees and so on, and add to that the cost of all the improvements you have made over the years to get a grand total, which is known as the "adjusted basis." (If you sold a home prior to August 5, 1997 and took advantage of the old rule that let home seller put off the tax on their profit by "rolling" the profit over into a new home, your adjusted basis is reduced by the amount of any rolled-over profit.) Compare the adjusted basis with the sales price you get for the house. If you've made a profit, that gain may be taxable (generally only if the profit is more than $250,000 for an individual or $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly). Unfortunately, losses on sales of personal residences are not deductible.