Home Renovation Tax Deductions Explained

Search for a tax deduction for home renovation and you will find a lot of confident, contradictory advice, because the honest answer is more nuanced than most headlines admit: for the home you actually live in, most renovations are not immediately deductible at all. That surprises people who assumed a $40,000 kitchen or a new roof would show up on their return the following spring. It usually does not. What it often does instead is quieter and slower, it adds to your cost basis, which can shrink the taxable gain if you sell the house years later.

This explainer walks through the whole picture in plain language: the repairs-versus-improvements distinction that decides almost everything, the handful of cases where a renovation genuinely is deductible or creditable (energy upgrades, medical-necessity modifications, a home office, and rental property), how to keep records and track your basis so the benefit survives to closing day, and the common myths that cost homeowners money. It pairs naturally with our home renovation budget playbook and our cost files on a kitchen remodel and a bathroom remodel, which cover what the work itself should cost. Because this is a tax topic, everything here is general and illustrative, and the rules change and vary by situation, so confirm your specifics with a tax professional or the IRS before acting.

The tax deduction for home renovation question, answered plainly

The question most homeowners actually mean when they ask about a tax deduction for home renovation is simple: “Will this remodel lower my tax bill?” For the primary home you live in, the plain answer is usually no, not this year. The tax code treats spending on your own residence as personal spending, in the same bucket as a new couch, not as a deductible business or investment expense. So the new bathroom, the finished basement, and the fresh paint do not reduce this year’s taxable income for the typical homeowner.

That does not mean the money is invisible to the tax system. Qualifying improvements are added to your home’s cost basis, a running total of what the property has cost you, and a higher basis can mean a smaller taxable profit when you eventually sell. So the benefit is real but deferred: you feel it at sale, not at tax time this year. Understanding that timing is the single biggest thing that clears up the confusion, and it is why record-keeping, covered later, matters so much.

There are exceptions where a renovation genuinely does something on this year’s return, and the rest of this explainer is largely about them. Energy-efficient upgrades, medically necessary modifications, a qualifying home office, and rental or income property each open a door to a current deduction or credit. But they are exceptions with conditions, not the default. Treat the general rule as “adds to basis, not deductible now,” then check whether your specific project fits one of the exceptions, and confirm it with a professional.

Repairs versus capital improvements: the distinction that decides everything

Almost every tax question about renovations comes down to one line: is this a repair or a capital improvement? The two are treated very differently, so getting the category right is the foundation for everything else. A repair keeps your home in its existing, ordinary working condition. Fixing a leaky pipe, patching a hole in the drywall, repainting a scuffed wall, or replacing a cracked windowpane with a similar one are classic repairs. They restore what was there rather than adding something new.

A capital improvement, by contrast, does one of three things: it adds value to the home, it prolongs the home’s useful life, or it adapts the home to a new use. A room addition, a whole-house rewiring, a new roof, a kitchen remodel, a finished basement, or a new central air system generally fall here. The label matters because on a personal residence a capital improvement adds to your cost basis, while a routine repair generally does not, and on income property the label decides whether a cost is deducted now or spread over years through depreciation.

The tricky part is that the line is not always crisp, and context changes it. Replacing a single broken window is a repair; replacing every window in the house as part of an upgrade can read as an improvement. A repair made as part of a larger remodel can get swept into the improvement for tax purposes. Because a big enough “repair” can cross into improvement territory, and because the treatment can hinge on details, use these as general principles and confirm any specific item, especially a borderline one, with a tax professional.

What adding to your cost basis actually means

Cost basis is one of those tax terms that sounds technical and is actually straightforward: it is a running total of what your home has cost you, starting with the purchase price. When you buy, your starting basis is generally the purchase price plus certain buying costs. Over the years you own the home, qualifying capital improvements get added to that number, raising your “adjusted basis.” When you sell, your taxable gain is calculated as the sale price (minus selling costs) minus that adjusted basis, not minus the original price you paid.

The mechanics are worth seeing concretely. Suppose you buy for an illustrative $320,000. Over a decade you add $80,000 of documented capital improvements: a new roof, a kitchen remodel, a finished basement. Your adjusted basis climbs to roughly $400,000. If you later sell for $500,000, your gain is measured against $400,000, so it is about $100,000, not the $180,000 it would have been if you had ignored the improvements. Those tracked improvements shaved $80,000 off the taxable gain, purely by being recorded.

This is why “not deductible now” is not the same as “worthless for taxes.” The improvement money is working, just on a delay and only if you can prove it. Many homeowners also qualify for a primary-residence gain exclusion that can remove part or all of a gain from tax, which is another reason the final bill varies so much. That exclusion has its own current rules, limits, and ownership and use tests, so confirm what applies to you rather than assuming. The one habit that protects the basis benefit is documentation, which is why records get their own sections below.

When home renovations are deductible or creditable

Set the general rule aside for a moment and look at the exceptions, because they are where an actual current-year tax benefit lives. Broadly, a home renovation can produce a deduction or a credit in four situations, each with its own rules. First, certain energy-efficient upgrades may qualify for a tax credit. Second, a medically necessary modification may be deductible as a medical expense. Third, the portion of a renovation tied to a qualifying home office may be deductible or depreciable. Fourth, work on a rental or other income property is generally deductible or depreciable as a cost of producing income.

Notice the pattern: three of the four exceptions attach the benefit to a specific qualifying purpose (energy, medical, business use) rather than to the renovation in general. A kitchen remodel done purely for your own enjoyment does not become deductible because you would like it to. The same physical work can carry a benefit in one context and none in another, which is exactly why homeowners get conflicting answers online, they are often describing different situations without saying so.

A credit and a deduction are also not the same thing, and the difference is money. A deduction reduces the income you are taxed on, so its value depends on your tax rate. A credit reduces your tax bill directly, dollar for dollar, which usually makes it the more valuable of the two. Energy upgrades tend to fall on the credit side, medical and business-use costs on the deduction side. The following sections take each exception in turn, but the specific amounts, caps, and eligibility rules all change, so confirm the current figures with a professional before relying on them.

Energy-efficient upgrade credits

Energy-efficient home improvements are the exception most homeowners have heard about, and they generally work as a tax credit rather than a deduction, which is usually the better deal. The categories commonly discussed include added insulation, efficient exterior windows and doors, high-efficiency heating and cooling equipment like heat pumps, and renewable systems such as solar panels or solar water heating. Because a credit cuts your tax directly, a qualifying upgrade can effectively return part of the project cost, subject to the program’s rules.

Here is where the hard hedge matters most. The specific products that qualify, the percentage of cost a credit covers, the annual and lifetime caps, and the years a program is in effect all change from year to year, and different upgrades fall under different provisions. Any specific number you read, including numbers on other websites, may be out of date by the time you file. So rather than quote a figure that could mislead you, the responsible advice is to confirm the current energy credit rules and amounts with a tax professional or the IRS for the exact year and equipment you are installing.

The practical steps on your end are the same regardless of the current figures. Keep the manufacturer’s certification statement for the product, which is what establishes that a given model qualifies, along with the itemized receipts and the installation documentation. Note the installation date, because credits are generally tied to the year the work is placed in service. If you are weighing an efficiency upgrade partly for the credit, price the work first (our window replacement cost file and roof replacement cost file help), then confirm the current credit separately, so a credit you are not certain of is a bonus rather than the reason the math works.

Medical-necessity home modifications

The second exception is medically necessary home modifications, which can sometimes be deducted as a medical expense, though the rules are strict and often misunderstood. The qualifying examples are the kind of changes made to accommodate a diagnosed medical condition: entrance ramps, widening doorways or hallways for a wheelchair, installing grab bars and support rails, lowering counters or cabinets, or adding a stair lift. The modification generally needs to be for medical care for you, a spouse, or a dependent, not a general accessibility upgrade for convenience or resale appeal.

A crucial wrinkle trips up many people: if the medical modification also increases the value of your home, the deductible amount is generally reduced by that increase in value. So a change that adds little or no market value, a plain ramp, grab bars, tends to be deductible more fully, while something that also boosts value, say an added bathroom, may only be partly deductible up to the cost that exceeds the value it adds. The logic is that the tax benefit is meant for the medical necessity, not the home upgrade riding along with it.

On top of that, medical expense deductions usually only count to the extent they exceed a percentage-of-income threshold, and they generally require itemizing rather than taking the standard deduction, which many households do not do. So even a genuinely qualifying modification may or may not produce a deduction depending on your total medical costs and your filing choices for the year. The thresholds, the value-offset rule, and what documentation is required can change, so keep the contractor’s invoices and any physician documentation, and confirm your specific situation with a tax professional before claiming anything.

The home-office portion of a renovation

The third exception is the home office, and it is the one with the most eligibility landmines. If you genuinely qualify for the home office deduction, costs tied to that office space may be deductible or, for an improvement, depreciated over time. But qualifying is the hard part. The space generally has to be used regularly and exclusively for business, a spare corner of a room used part-time for personal things usually does not count, and the treatment differs sharply depending on whether you are self-employed or an employee.

That employee-versus-self-employed split is where a lot of outdated advice goes wrong. In recent years the ability of employees to deduct home office costs has been sharply limited, while self-employed people and certain business owners have more room, subject to the rules. So the same renovation to the same room can be deductible for one person and not for another, based entirely on their work status. If you have heard that “you can write off your home office remodel,” that heard-it-somewhere version skips the eligibility test that decides the whole thing.

When a home office does qualify, only the business-use portion of a whole-home cost typically counts. If your office is a defined share of the home’s square footage, a whole-house cost like a new roof is generally allocated by that percentage, while a cost that benefits only the office directly may be handled on its own. Improvements to the office space are commonly depreciated rather than deducted all at once, which spreads the benefit over years and adds bookkeeping. Because the eligibility rules, the methods, and the recordkeeping requirements change and are easy to get wrong, confirm your specific case with a tax professional rather than assuming the space qualifies.

Rental property renovations and depreciation

The fourth exception is the cleanest conceptually: work on a rental or other income-producing property is generally treated as a cost of earning income, which opens up deductions the personal-home rules do not allow. Here the repair-versus-improvement distinction reappears with real teeth. A genuine repair on a rental, fixing a furnace, patching a roof leak, repainting between tenants, is typically deductible in the year you pay for it. A capital improvement, a new roof, an added room, a full kitchen replacement, is generally not deducted all at once but depreciated, spread across a set number of years defined by the tax rules.

Depreciation is the mechanism that lets you recover the cost of an improvement to income property over time. Instead of one big deduction, you take a portion each year across the asset’s recovery period. That is why landlords care intensely about whether a given cost is a repair or an improvement: a repair helps this year’s return immediately, while an improvement helps gradually. There are also provisions that can change the timing for certain costs, and the categories and periods are technical, so this is an area where professional help pays for itself quickly.

If you rent out only part of your home, or rent a property part of the year, the rules get more involved because costs generally have to be allocated between personal and rental use. A renovation that touches both the rented and personal portions is not fully deductible; only the rental share generally counts, and mixed-use situations have their own tests. The bookkeeping burden is real, and the rules around rental deductions, depreciation, and eventual depreciation recapture at sale change and interact, so keep meticulous records and confirm the treatment of each project with a tax professional who handles rental property.

Improvement type to tax treatment: a quick reference

It helps to see the common project types lined up against their typical tax treatment. The table below is a general, illustrative guide for a personal residence unless noted, not a ruling on your specific project, and the treatment of any given item can shift with the details and the current rules. Use it to build intuition, then confirm the specifics.

Read the table as a starting point, not a verdict. The same physical job, a new set of windows, can be a basis-adding improvement on your home, a possible credit if it meets energy criteria, and a depreciated cost on a rental, all depending on context. The rules and thresholds change, so confirm the treatment of your particular project with a tax professional or the IRS.

Where renovation dollars land for tax purposes

To picture how a typical homeowner’s renovation spending sorts across tax outcomes, the chart below shows an illustrative split. For most personal-home projects, the large majority of the money is capital improvement that quietly adds to basis, a modest slice is pure repair with no tax angle, and only small slices touch the credit or deduction exceptions. Your own mix depends entirely on what you are doing and why.

The lesson of the chart is that the money is not evenly spread across tax outcomes. Most of it sits in the basis-building bar, where the benefit is real but only pays off at sale and only if documented. The exception bars are small and conditional. So the highest-value tax habit for a typical homeowner is not chasing a rare deduction, it is diligently tracking the improvements that quietly raise your basis, which the next chart makes concrete.

How improvements reduce your taxable gain at sale

The clearest way to see the payoff of tracked improvements is at the closing table. The stacked bar below breaks an illustrative $500,000 sale price into its parts. The original purchase basis is the largest band, the documented improvements added over the years are the middle band, and what remains, the taxable gain before any exclusion, is the top band. The point is visual: the improvement band is a slice of the sale price that is protected from tax precisely because it lifted your basis.

Read the two charts together and the strategy is obvious. The first chart shows most renovation money flows into basis-building improvements. The second shows exactly how that basis reduces a taxable gain. The bridge between them is documentation: an improvement you cannot prove with records generally cannot be added to basis, so the middle band silently shrinks to whatever you can substantiate. Try your own numbers in the cost-basis tracker and in the companion on this page, then keep the paperwork that makes those numbers real.

Keeping records and receipts the tax way

If there is one action item in this whole explainer, it is this: keep your renovation records as if you will need to prove every dollar, because at sale you might. The basis benefit is only as good as your ability to substantiate it, and a decade later “I definitely spent about that much” is not proof. The documents that matter are the itemized invoices and contracts, proof of payment (canceled checks, card or bank statements), and the permits and inspection records that establish the work was done. Together they show what you did, when, and what it cost.

The practical system does not need to be fancy. A single dated digital folder per year, with scans of every renovation invoice and receipt, beats a shoebox of fading thermal-paper slips. Name files clearly, note whether each cost is a repair or an improvement when you file it, and keep a simple running spreadsheet that totals your improvements toward basis. Doing this at the time of the work, while you still have the paperwork and remember the details, is far easier than reconstructing it under deadline pressure years later when you are trying to sell.

How long to keep it all is a common question with a conservative answer: generally for as long as you own the home, plus several years after you sell, since the sale is when the improvement records finally get used. An improvement from eight years ago still affects the gain calculation, so its receipt is still live. Retention periods and what records satisfy the IRS can change, and different situations carry different requirements, so confirm the current guidance with a tax professional or the IRS. When in doubt, keep more rather than less; storage is cheap and a lost receipt is a lost deduction from basis.

Tracking your cost basis over the years

Beyond keeping individual receipts, it pays to maintain a single living record of your adjusted basis, because the number you need at sale is a sum of many small events spread across years. Start the record with your purchase: the price you paid plus the qualifying buying costs that add to basis. From there, every time you complete a capital improvement, add a dated line with the cost and a short description, and note the supporting document’s location. Over the years that list becomes your adjusted basis, ready to hand to whoever prepares your return at sale.

Keep the record honest about the repair-versus-improvement line, because padding it with routine repairs that do not qualify is a problem, not a benefit. A useful discipline is to tag each renovation entry as “improvement, adds to basis” or “repair, no basis effect” when you enter it, using the principles from earlier in this explainer. Borderline items get a flag and a note to confirm with a professional. This keeps the running total defensible rather than optimistic, which is exactly what you want if the number is ever examined.

Certain events can also decrease basis, not just increase it, which is easy to overlook. Things like casualty-loss reimbursements or certain credits and payments can reduce your basis under the rules, so a complete record tracks reductions as well as additions. Because what adds to or subtracts from basis, and how, is governed by rules that change, treat your running spreadsheet as a well-organized starting point for a professional, not as the final tax calculation. The goal is that when you sell, nothing about your basis is a guess, and every line has a document behind it.

Common myths about home renovation tax deductions

A handful of persistent myths cost homeowners money or false confidence, so it is worth naming them directly.

• “Any home improvement is tax deductible.” For a personal residence, most are not deductible in the year you do them. The usual benefit is a basis increase that helps at sale, not a current deduction, and the true current-year benefits are the narrow exceptions covered above.
• “A remodel pays for itself on my taxes.” A remodel done for your own enjoyment generally produces no current deduction, and even the basis benefit only offsets a future gain, which a primary-residence exclusion might have covered anyway. The tax effect rarely comes close to paying for the project.
• “Repairs count the same as improvements.” They usually do not. Repairs generally have no tax effect on a personal home, while improvements add to basis; on a rental, repairs deduct now and improvements depreciate. The label changes the outcome.
• “I can estimate my improvement costs at sale.” Without documentation, an improvement generally cannot be added to basis. An honest guess is not proof, so undocumented improvements effectively do not count, which is why receipts matter so much.
• “Everyone gets the energy credit.” Energy credits have qualifying products, caps, and expiration rules that change, and not every upgrade or household qualifies. Confirm the current program before counting on it.

Each myth traces back to the same root confusion: treating the rare exceptions as the rule, or treating a deferred basis benefit as a current deduction. Keep the general rule and the exceptions straight, and most of the myths dissolve.

A worked example: tracking basis on a kitchen remodel

Walk one illustrative situation through to see how the pieces connect. A homeowner buys a house for $320,000. Over ten years they complete several capital improvements: a $35,000 kitchen remodel, a $20,000 new roof, and a $25,000 finished basement, roughly $80,000 in documented improvements. They also spend on ordinary repairs along the way, a few hundred here and there for leaks and touch-up paint, which they correctly tag as repairs with no basis effect. They keep every improvement invoice, permit, and payment record in a dated folder and a running spreadsheet.

When they sell for $500,000, the arithmetic rewards the recordkeeping. Their adjusted basis is roughly $320,000 plus $80,000, or $400,000. The gain is measured against that adjusted basis, so it is about $100,000 rather than the $180,000 it would have been against the original purchase price. The $80,000 of tracked improvements pulled $80,000 out of the taxable-gain calculation, exactly as the stacked chart above showed. Whether any of the remaining gain is further reduced depends on a primary-residence exclusion with its own current rules, which they confirm with their preparer rather than assume.

Now imagine the same homeowner without the paperwork. They remember spending “around $80,000 on improvements” but kept few receipts and no running total. At sale, the improvements they cannot document generally cannot be added to basis, so their defensible adjusted basis is closer to the original $320,000, and their taxable gain balloons back toward $180,000. Same house, same actual spending, very different tax picture, and the only difference is records. The lesson is not clever, it is disciplined: track and document improvements as you go. Every figure here is illustrative, and the exclusion and basis rules change, so confirm your own numbers with a tax professional.

What counts as a capital improvement: concrete examples

To make the improvement category tangible, it helps to see the kinds of projects that generally qualify as capital improvements on a personal home, the ones that typically add to basis. These are jobs that add value, meaningfully extend the home’s life, or adapt it to a new use, rather than just keeping it running. The list below is illustrative and not exhaustive, and any specific item can turn on the details, but it captures the common cases homeowners ask about.

Common basis-adding improvements include additions and expansions (a new room, a second story, an enclosed porch, a garage), major system replacements (a new roof, a new furnace or central air, a full electrical rewire or re-plumb), and substantial interior remodels (a gut kitchen or bathroom remodel, a finished basement or attic). Exterior and site work often qualifies too: new siding, a new driveway, a deck, a fence, or significant landscaping that adds lasting value. Built-in upgrades like a new septic system, a water heater, or storm windows commonly fall here as well. For what these projects cost before any tax angle, our cost files on a finished basement, a kitchen remodel, and a roof replacement give illustrative ranges.

The thread connecting these is permanence and value. A capital improvement is something a future buyer would see as part of the house, not a consumable you used up. That is a useful gut check when you are unsure: is this a lasting part of the property that adds value or life, or is it maintenance that just keeps things as they were? The first tends toward improvement and basis; the second toward repair and no effect. Borderline projects, and there are plenty, deserve a note in your records and a question to your tax professional, because the current rules decide the close calls.

What does not qualify, and why

Just as useful is knowing what generally does not give you a current deduction, so you are not surprised. Routine repairs and maintenance top the list: repainting a worn wall, fixing a leak, servicing the furnace, replacing a broken fixture with a similar one. These keep the home in ordinary working order without adding lasting value or life, so on a personal residence they typically do nothing for your taxes, neither a deduction now nor an addition to basis. They are simply the cost of owning a home.

Cosmetic and preference-driven upgrades chosen purely for taste, without an energy, medical, home-office, or income-property angle, also generally sit in the not-currently-deductible bucket, though the larger ones may still count as basis-adding improvements even while giving you nothing this year. The distinction to hold onto is between “not deductible now” and “no tax effect ever.” A big remodel is usually the former: it does not help this year’s return, but it does raise your basis for later. A minor repair is often the latter: no help now and no basis effect.

The honest summary is the one worth repeating: for the home you live in, the deductible and creditable cases are exceptions, not the rule, and even those come with conditions like exclusive business use, medical necessity, or a value offset. If your project has none of those angles, expect its tax role to be a basis increase you will appreciate at sale, not a line on this spring’s return. And because the boundaries and the exceptions all change over time and vary by situation, treat every category here as a general guide and confirm your specific project with a tax professional or the IRS.

How the rules differ for a primary home, second home, and rental

The same renovation is treated differently depending on what kind of property it is, which is a frequent source of crossed wires. On your primary residence, the general rule is the one this explainer centers on: most improvements are not currently deductible but add to basis, with the narrow energy, medical, and home-office exceptions, and a possible primary-residence gain exclusion at sale under its own rules. It is the most restrictive category for current deductions and the one most homeowners are actually in.

A second home or vacation property that you do not rent out is broadly similar in that personal-use improvements are not currently deductible and add to basis, but the gain exclusion available on a primary residence generally does not apply the same way to a property that is not your main home. If you rent the second home part of the time, it becomes a mixed-use situation with allocation rules, and the tax picture gets more complex, blending personal and rental treatment. These mixed cases are exactly where do-it-yourself assumptions go wrong.

A pure rental or income property is the most permissive for deductions because the costs are tied to earning income: repairs generally deduct in the year paid, and improvements are depreciated over time, with their own recapture consequences at sale. The trade-off is far more bookkeeping and more moving parts, including depreciation schedules and allocation for any personal use. Because the treatment hinges on the property’s classification and use, and because those rules and the interactions between them change, confirm the category and the treatment of your project with a tax professional, especially for second homes and rentals where the rules are less intuitive.

When to bring in a tax professional

You can do a lot of the groundwork yourself, sorting repairs from improvements, keeping receipts, maintaining a basis spreadsheet, and that groundwork makes professional help cheaper and more accurate. But certain moments call for a professional rather than a best guess, because the cost of getting them wrong is high. Selling a home with significant improvements, claiming an energy credit, deducting a medical modification, running a home office, or owning a rental are all situations where the rules are specific, changeable, and unforgiving of assumptions.

A good tax professional does more than fill in forms. They can tell you whether a borderline cost is a repair or an improvement for your situation, how a gain exclusion interacts with your basis, whether your home office genuinely qualifies and how to handle it, and how depreciation and its recapture will play out on a rental. They also keep up with the annual changes to credits, thresholds, and limits that make any static article, including this one, a starting point rather than a final answer. The fee is usually small next to the tax at stake on a home sale or a multi-year depreciation decision.

Bring them your organized records, not a shoebox, and you get better advice for less time. That is the quiet return on the recordkeeping habit: it is not just protection, it is what lets an expert give you a precise answer instead of a hedged one. For the non-tax side of planning and paying for the work itself, our renovation budget playbook and the job cost estimator help you size the project, and then a tax professional handles the tax treatment. Everything in this explainer is general and illustrative, so use it to ask better questions, and let a professional confirm the answers for your situation.

The bottom line

The tax deduction for home renovation that most people are hoping for usually does not exist for the home they live in, at least not as an immediate write-off. The realistic and still valuable picture is this: most renovations are capital improvements that add to your cost basis and quietly reduce a taxable gain when you sell, while a few narrow situations, energy-efficient upgrades, medically necessary modifications, a qualifying home office, and rental or income property, can produce an actual current deduction or credit. Knowing which bucket your project falls into is most of the battle.

The single habit that turns this knowledge into money is documentation. Sort each cost into repair or improvement as you go, keep the invoices, permits, and proof of payment, and maintain a running basis total so that years later nothing is a guess. That discipline is what protects the deferred benefit and what lets a tax professional give you a precise answer on the exceptions. Because tax rules change and vary by situation, and every figure here is illustrative, confirm your specific project, and especially anything involving a sale, a credit, a medical claim, a home office, or a rental, with a qualified tax professional or the IRS before you rely on it.

ProsNook publishes this explainer to help homeowners understand how renovations interact with taxes, and it is educational content, not tax, legal, or financial advice. Every dollar figure, percentage, and category above is illustrative and general, and tax rules, credit amounts, deduction thresholds, basis and exclusion provisions, and record-retention requirements change over time and differ by property, income, filing status, and jurisdiction. Nothing here is a determination about your situation, and no specific credit or deduction figure should be treated as current. Before you claim any deduction or credit, calculate a cost basis, or make a decision based on the tax treatment of a project, gather your own records and consult a qualified tax professional or the IRS for the rules in force for your year and circumstances.