Houseblogging landlord tax nightmare

Actually, that was last year, but it's peaking its ugly head again this year and helps me reminisce about tax time last year.

Ever since we started work on this place, we have meticulously saved our receipts. 4 big envelopes, Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, and "other". We knew one day, we would need them. Now what perchance, would make this little story a nightmare? Toss a rental into the picture. All those little expenditures could be depreciated, decreasing our rental income (and our taxes) But, we never really looked into this when we started collecting receipts-hence the nightmare.

Interspersed with all our little house projects, we routinely played the game "what does "INTLTXBS1GL" mean (newbies at the game I think that is 1 gallon interior latex paint)? And round 2 is that a rental expense, general expense, or our expense? can it be capitalized? Fun times. Home Depot is really the worse at descriptions.

After all the joy with categorizing items, 2006 we took a vow to always indicate the category when we brought home a receipt. We ended up doing that about 50% of the time. (much easier though categorizing things over the last year vs. 3 years!)

Anyway, it's not just about demo, stripping, and painting around here-there's plenty more renovation joy to be had.