Most landlords know that the mortgage interest on an investment property can be written-off. It is usually the single largest tax write-off. However, they can also write off any interest incurred on credit cards and other loans used to improve or acquire a property. As an example, if you host a holiday party at your property and charge it to your business credit card, you can take that interest out.

Depreciation is a term that most people find difficult to understand. After all, homes always tend to appreciate, so would anyone think to write off depreciation? Here are the things that you need to know: The IRS considers every residential real estate property to be a depreciating asset. The useful life of a building is 27.5 years. It means that you can write off the depreciation of 1/27th of the building each year. To do this, you must separate the value of the building from the value of the land. Your tax assessor should give you an idea, the value of each of the buildings and the land.

Some real estate investors would like to consider doing a cost segregation study. This study will allow you to accelerate depreciation for some aspects of the property ahead of others. For instance, personal properties such as furniture, fixtures, carpets, window treatments, and appliances can be fully depreciated after 5 or 7 years. Land improvements such as pavement, fences, sidewalks, and landscaping, can usually be depreciated for 15 years. The building is amortized over the full 27.5-year period.

If you travel to a place related to the property located more than 30 miles away, that travel expenses can be taken off on your taxes. As a landlord owning a rental property, you can even write off travel expenses that are related to searching for a prospective investment property, such as a trip that's needed to evaluate an out-of-state opportunity. However, there are some restrictions to this; for instance, at least half of the time spent on that trip must be associated with evaluating the opportunity.

Every time you pay someone to perform services related to your property, you can deduct the wages or fees as a business expense. As always, you need to keep receipts. Since you want to be able to use these fees as a business expense, always keep a receipt, even if it's for as small a job as paying someone to mow your lawn.

Fees for professional services incurred during the course of running your rental properties can be written-off by landlords, property managers, and the homeowners association. These fees include payments for professionals such as your attorney, accountant, management company, and investment advisers. These costs are considered operational expenses that are a part of running the business.

If you have incurred some marketing expenses like printing new signs that highlight the available units or launching a website for your rental property, those costs can be deducted on your taxes. Any advertising expense can be written off as a business expense. Examples to these expenses are ads placed in newspapers, or even the fee you paid to sponsor real estate marketing events. These costs are often considered by landlords, property managers, and homeowners association as part of the regular routine of doing business.

Plan ahead to make sure you're ready for tax season. Landlords, property managers, and homeowners associations must understand the full breadth of tax write-offs available to those who own or operate rental properties. To take advantage of all these tax deductions, you need to consider hiring an accountant so you can be guided on achieving all applying tax write-offs. An accountant can be a huge help to you, as long as you have the proper receipts, bank statements, and documents to support these write-offs.

If you struggle to track your expenses for tax write-offs, it might be time to hire an experienced property manager to help you systematize the process, in order to  go through tax season with ease.