BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - How to (Legally) Pay the Least Amount in Taxes as a Real Estate Investor

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

This episode alone could save you hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands in taxes—all with 100% legal means.  If you own a rental property, you could be paying significantly less in taxes. With the US tax code being favorable to real estate investors and renewed provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, real estate investing is one of the most tax-advantaged investments on the planet. Today, we’re showing you how to pay the least amount of taxes, before tax day 2026! Amanda Han, CPA and real estate investor, says 40% of the tax returns she reviews are not optimized for deductions. Investors are leaving thousands on the table and giving it straight to the IRS. But after this episode, you won’t have to anymore. We’re talking about how real estate investors can reduce their taxable income by up to 20%—instantly. Plus, the one renewed tax deduction that creates six-figure write-offs for investors, and what you can start doing right now to lower your taxes as much as possible starting in 2026.  In This Episode We Cover How to reduce your taxable rental income by 20% instantly (many investors miss this) The biggest (six-figure) write-off that was renewed in the One Big Beautiful Bill  Commonly missed real estate tax deductions that every investor can write off  Are opportunity zones back? How to defer your capital gain to another year  What to start doing right now to have the most tax deductions with the least stress If your CPA says this to you…consider finding a new one  And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1239 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you skip this episode, you could be leaving thousands of dollars on the table. They say there's only two things guaranteed in life, death and taxes. And since you're alive watching this right now, today we're going to focus on the latter, how real estate investors can legally pay less tax. And things have changed a lot this year, big time. The big, beautiful bill, tax provisions are going into effect for this April's tax deadline, and it has huge implications for real estate investors. And that's true, whether you own one rental,

or an entire portfolio. The strategies we're sharing today, they can save you hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your investments. In this episode, we're also going to share the under-the-radar tax strategy that 99% of investors are missing out on

and we'll have a CPA tell us what you need to do today so you're never scrambling during tax time again. Hey, what's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer, chief investment officer at Bigger Pockets. Today's guest on the show is Amanda Hahn. If you haven't heard Amanda before, she's been on the show a lot, but she's an expert. She's a CPA, a tax strategist, and she's a real estate investor herself. She specializes in helping investors pay the least amount of possible taxes legally.

And since April 15th is coming sooner than any of us hope or think, let's bring on Amanda and learn together how to save some money this year. Amanda Hahn, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Dave. I'm super excited to be back. Well, we've had you on the show many times, but some in our audience may not know who you are yet. So can you just introduce yourself for us?

Of course. Hi, everyone. My name is Amanda Hahn. And what I always tell people is that I am a CPA by day. And by nighttime, I am like many of you, a real estate investor. My husband and I co-authored the two bigger pockets tax books. So if you haven't checked those out, make sure to do so. One of my passions is really in helping to educate people on all the different things they can do to use real estate to not just build wealth, but also to save a significant amount in taxes if you do things correctly.

So really excited to be here. It's that time of the year when taxes are top of mind. It is. Well, thanks for joining us today. And if you haven't read Amanda's book and you want to save money on taxes, it's the single best thing that you could do. I self-admittedly, Amanda, you know this about me. I'm terrible at this stuff. I'm not good at tax strategy,

but I've gotten better because of reading Amanda's books and getting to know her. So definitely check that out. But hopefully we'll give you a little taste of the kind of stuff that you can learn here in this episode. So Amanda, maybe just break it down for us. For people who might be new to investing

or for those who are just scaling their portfolio, I think a lot of us, it takes a little time to realize that you should be thinking about taxes. What are sort of the big buckets of tax strategies? that investors should be thinking about. Yeah, well, we'll start at the basics, which is that it's important to understand when you invest in real estate, you are actually a business owner in the eyes of the IRS.

And so, you know, we hear people talk a lot about how tax law favors business owners when it comes to write-offs, deductions, depreciation. And so it's really important to understand that as a real estate investor, I am now able to take advantage of a lot of those same tax. benefits and deductions that the traditional business owner has access to. And this is true regardless of whether we own our rentals in our individual name or in our trust or in an LLC. We call it real estate investing, but it really is just entrepreneurship. You're starting a small business to own real estate, just like any other service business or business that you

create. And that is good. That's a good thing for real estate investing. That's why you get better tax benefits than if you were to go out and buy stock or cryptocurrency or anything like that, that's why real estate has so many advantages. So what are the big things that people should be thinking about as they enter tax season right now? You know, what's really interesting is when we work with investors all over the U.S. on proactive tax planning, about 40% of tax returns that we review from previous years are not optimized for tax savings. And I can share some of the most common mistakes I see, and I think these are kind of the things that we should all keep in mind as we get ready for tax season, right? And we'll start with just capturing expenses. As real estate

investors, I think we're all really good at making sure we write off our mortgage interest and property taxes and management fees. But some of those common misdeductions, even insurance. Property insurance is one that we see missed pretty frequently. And it's really strange because we all have property insurance. But just some of the overhead things, home office, most real estate investors manage their rentals from their home. Very few people actually go out and rent an office space. So if you have an eligible office, make sure you are claiming it because it does help you to save on taxes either today or sometime in the future, depending on your facts and circumstances. But just overhead expenses, going to Bigger Pockets Conference, your Bigger Pockets membership, buying a tax book,

for example, using your car for business, right? Yeah, absolutely, for sure. I always wonder about like travel. Is that something that you can deduct? Like I invest out of state. And so sometimes I'm going to visit the Midwest and I'm staying at hotels. That's something I can deduct, right? Yeah, for sure. And you actually, it's not a requirement that you own rental properties in a state in order to take a tax deduction. What is required is that you're able to demonstrate the main reason for that travel is related to real estate activities. So for example, if I didn't own any private, properties in Orlando, but I'm going to Orlando for a bigger pockets conference, that travel itself should be tax deductible, right? The flights, the hotels, the food when I'm

there. And same thing if I'm just, I happen to have a trip plan to go to Ohio to look for rental properties. Even though I don't end up buying any properties, my travel costs could be deductible. As long as I can show I went there for the purpose of looking for real estate, touring properties and things like that. So I want everyone to listen to that because this is something that comes out a lot. When we talk about out-of-state investing, people don't go and visit markets that they're considering investing in, and I always encourage people to do it. It's a big expense, I understand that, but it is tax deductible in most situations. So that does take the sting out of it a little bit. It is a business expense and encourage you to think about it. So that's one big thing people should

be thinking about their returns, right? Expenses. What else is there? Well, along this kind of a similar line, oftentimes when we review tax returns, obviously one of the big things we look at is depreciation, right? Our ability to take a paper loss on the purchase price of the rental building we purchased. And very frequently, we'll see the depreciation as a very round number. So $500,000 for Main Street or $200,000 for Fremont Street. And that usually jumps out to me as not really capturing all of our costs associated with the acquisition of a property. Because we all know when we buy a property, we're not just paying the purchase price of it. We are also paying closing costs. And there is different allocated or prorated property taxes and insurance and all those. So one thing we can do for any of you who've purchased a property during the year, sold the property, refinanced on a property, make sure you send your closing disclosure to your accountant

as you get ready to meet them because then they, they can take the closing disclosure and pull out all of those associated expenses beyond just you telling them what the purchase price is. Okay. That's a very good tip. And how big of a difference does it make? Like if you have an average rental property, it's $400,000, you know, you're making some cash flow off of it.

How big of a difference in your tax is it when you prepare the tax right and when you do it sort of just haphazardly? Oh, you know, the answer really depends. from person to person, right? Because one question is going to be, what is your tax rate? If you're someone who is in a high tax bracket because you make a lot of income from other sources, then even $1,000 of a deduction could save you $500 in actual cash. And for some people, that's a, you know, it's a decent amount. I think for anyone, I would, you know, I would never throw away $500 for no good reason. But if you have a good system to track your expenses, those items add up over time. So if you're

able to utilize it this year to offset your tax is great. If you can't because of passive activity limitations in the tax world, I always encourage clients still track them, send it to your accountant because you want to make sure it's reported because even the expenses that you cannot utilize today, you never lose them. You get to utilize them some point in the future. Yeah, in an era of real estate investing where it's super hard to find cash flow. This is cash flow. We often treat taxes as this separate income source or something different to think about in real estate.

But as Amanda just said, she used a modest example of if you can save 500 bucks, that's reasonable. If you could save $1,200 bucks and that's $100 a month in cash flow, that could change your cash on cash return from 3% to 6% in a given year. if you're actually just doing this right. And it's one of the ways I think you could just keep more money in your pocket. And that really has measurable differences in your actual overall return profile. Yeah.

I mean, I used a very small example. But if, you know, if we go to the other extreme and say, well, how impactful could that be in real life? Yeah. If we're talking about somebody who invested in a rental property where the building was $400,000, you know, with the current. law where we have a hundred percent bonus depreciation, that could be, what, $120,000 of a deduction just in the first year. If you're in a, you know, 50 percent tax bracket, that could be $60,000 in tax saving. So, you know, we're saying, okay, save 500 or save $60,000, I love both of those, you know. Yeah, sign me up, 100%. All right. So those are some great basics that everyone,

whether you're just starting or have a big portfolio, should be listening to, of course, this year, we have some exciting tax stuff, I think, from a real estate investing perspective, where many of the provisions that were passed last year in the one big, beautiful bill act are starting to go in effect. So I want to pick your brain on that a little bit, Amanda. We do have to take one quick break. We'll be right back. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast, easy? Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get. your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the

right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post. The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie.

Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal? because the financing just took too long. Red flags popped up late.

The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that. With their new express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee so you can get great pricing

and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question.

What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10% below market value in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent to retirement does. They're a full-service, turnkey investment company handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of our down payment back at close. plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter.

If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Most investors spend all their time talking about their high-level returns. But that's not the number that actually matters. What actually matters is what you keep after taxes, and that's where multifamily real estate quietly stands out. With built-in advantages like depreciation,

the right deals can just, generate steady cash flow while reducing the tax drag. Bam Capital structures its multifamily investments around those fundamentals, pairing tax efficiency with disciplined operators and a long-term approach. This isn't about chasing hype or guessing market timing. It's about building durable, tax-aware wealth over time. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. Welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast.

I'm here with Amanda Hahn talking about tax strategy. It's the beginning of the year. It's time that we all start thinking about. this. Amanda enlightened us before the break just on how you should be thinking about capturing your expenses on a property level and how to maximize your deduction so you can keep more money in your pocket. A lot of things are changing though, Amanda. It's not just the same old, same old in tax world for real estate investors. So maybe you can give us a high level overview of what has changed and what's in the big beautiful bill act that is relevant for real estate investors.

Yes. Well, I mean, not surprisingly with the current administration, the one big beautiful bill included a ton of very amazing benefits for real estate investors. One that, you know, I think everybody was really excited for was the return of 100% bonus depreciation. Previous to that week, we can always take depreciation on our rental properties. But under the old law, if there hasn't been changes, this year, bonus depreciation would have only been at. 20%. So with the change of the law, now bonus depreciation for 2026 is at 100%, which effectively means, you know, if you bought a property after January 19th of 2025 or anytime in 2026 and the foreseeable future, not only do we get to take depreciation on our rental properties, but that amount is supercharged, meaning we can take a very significant tax benefit upfront, rather than the, you know, traditional rule of having to wait over a significant number of years to take a tax write-off for it.

And maybe you could just help us understand what is the benefit of front-loading depreciation and what are some instances or circumstances where you recommend that for real estate investors? For sure, the purpose or the benefit of accelerated depreciation, basically saying, rather than waiting over time to take a tax benefit on the purchase price of my rental building. I'm going to do what's called a cost segregation study. And what that does is it allows me to then take faster depreciation this year and maybe the next few years rather than having to wait. So effectively, we're looking at the time value of money, of savings. In other words, I know I have to pay taxes to the IRS. I can either pay it now or I can pay it slowly over the next 27 or 39 years.

and if I choose to pay my taxes later, that means I'm able to keep my cash longer with me today and reinvest and grow that money today rather than just give me it to the IRS. So that's where the concept of it, now I will say it is not for everyone. So don't run out and start taking accelerated depreciation just because you hear it here.

The ideal profile of when you want to take accelerated depreciation are in years when you can actually benefit from it. So that would be years. where you have high taxable income and or years where you can actually utilize rental losses to offset that different set of income that you're generating, whether it's from a W-2 or a business that you operate. And so conversely, who should not do a cost segregation? Well, you should not accelerate depreciation if you're not able to utilize it this year. For someone like me or maybe for someone else who has a W-2 job, is bonus depreciation in doing the COSEC even worth it?

great time to do cost segregation is if you have a gain. So let's say I have a portfolio, but I sold one rental for a huge gain and I didn't want a 1031 exchange or use other strategies. I could also consider doing a cost segregation on one of the properties in my existing portfolio and try to offset one with the other. So you can actually take the depreciation from one portfolio property and apply it to another one, even if you're not a real estate professional? Yep, exactly. I love that. And I will say one other things since we're on the topic of someone who is not a real estate professional, you may have been told by your accountant that there is no tax benefit to you investing in real

estate because either you work full-time or you make too much money. And when you hear that from an accountant, they're doing what I called tunnel visioning because all they're saying is, for example, Dave, you're not going to see a huge benefit this year in owning rental real estate because you're still going to pay taxes on your W-2 income. But what they're not factoring in are the different benefits, which is I generated rental cash flow that I'm not paying taxes on. Right. And also in the future, when I generate future cash flow, I may not have to pay taxes on. And also the most important part, which is at the end of my investment with this specific property, if I were to sell it, at that point, I can actually use all of the accumulated losses from that property to reduce not just the

capital gains from the sale, but also W2 and all other income as well. So there's absolutely benefit to being a real estate investor. It's just a timing of when somebody actually sees that. One of the things I struggled with early in my investing career is you look at these things, you say, oh, I'm going to pay this tax eventually if I just defer it. And at least for me, I didn't really appreciate the time value of money element. Like I can keep more principle in my pocket and use that to go buy other investment properties to make renovations on my properties. And in addition to just delaying that, this is getting nerdy about it, but you also wind up paying your taxes in inflated devalue dollars over time too. So you're purchasing power, part of the

idea of the time value is money is your money is worth today more than it's worth in the future. And so if you can hold on to it and use it to build your portfolio currently, then it's better, you know, to invest $100 today than is $100 several years from now. And so that's one of the main things about tax strategy that real estate allows you to do. And that's kind of the same idea behind like a 1031 too, right? Like you eventually, in theory, at least have to pay that tax. But like if you can defer that and go out and save the 20% on capital gains and just go buy another property, it means you just have more purchasing power, which is so powerful, especially earlier in your investing career. So anyway, long conversation to hear about bonus

depreciation, depreciation in general, anything else from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that our audience should know about? Yeah, well, beyond bonus depreciation, one of the good things about the one big beautiful bill is that we were able to retain the tax benefit that's called qualified business income deduction, QBI for short. So that was something that was available that was then, you know, extended as part of the One Big Beautiful bill. And basically, the reason we care about that as real estate investors is QBI basically allows certain types of business income to have tax-free treatment up to 20%. So an example could be if, you know, I've owned my rentals for many years and even after using depreciation and cost segregation, I just, I have to pay taxes.

There's taxable income. Well, under QBI, if I had $100 worth of taxable income, I may only have to pay taxes on $80 of it, which means $20 of money. my taxable rental income could be completely tax-free. And this doesn't just apply to rental income. It applies to all different types of income, specifically in real estate as well. So for those of you who are flipping properties, doing wholesale, or if your property manager, co-hosting, you know, all of the different types, up to 20% of that taxable income could potentially be tax-free under QBI deduction. and that is something we enjoy for 2025 as well as 2026. Amazing.

Finally, a tax win for flippers at wholesalers. Honestly, as you're listening to Amanda, most of the benefits for real estate investors come with buy and hold styles of investing. It doesn't need to be rentals. A lot of them still apply for short-term rentals or mid-term rentals, but it's kind of a buy-and-hold. The transactional kind of real estate doesn't always get the same treatment, but QBI is a great example.

Although I will say that for some reason, a lot of tax returns will review that are prepared by other firms are often missing that QBI deduction. So one of the things, as you're getting ready to meet with your accountant, to file last year's taxes, that's another question you can add to the list

is just to have them double check, you know, make sure I'm getting my qualified business income deduction. And it very well could be that, hey, it doesn't apply to you because you have rental losses, right? So when we have losses, it doesn't apply. because we're already not paying taxes on it,

but to the extent you have taxable income from real estate or even a non-real estate business, it's super, super significant when it comes to savings. We see this mostly with our clients who do fix and flips and our clients who are on the active real estate side. Brokers, realtors, has, you know, been a very significant tax saving in the past couple years. All right.

Well, everyone, make sure that you have QBI, or at least think about QBI and see, if you qualify for this QBI deduction this year. Sounds like that could be a huge savings. All right, we got to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk to Amanda about how to set yourself up for a stress-free and hopefully very profitable tax prep season this year.

Stay with us. We'll be right back. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model. They help investors buy turnkey new construction homes,

often 10% below market value in top rental markets across the country. Their local teams handle the build, the property management, and the details, so you don't have to. In some cases, investors even receive 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, and there are interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've been trusted partners with BiggerPockets for over a decade, and if you want to learn more, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement. Here's the truth about passive investing.

If the strategy isn't right on day one, the returns won't save it. Multi-family real estate offers structural advantages. Many investors are overlooking, including depreciation that can help offset taxable income while cash flow continues. Bam Capital builds its investment with that reality in mind. They are focused on solid operators, tax efficiency, and long-term performance. For investors who want real estate exposure without being landlords and who care about consistency over hype, this is a smarter way to allocate capital. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. New Year, clean slate, and maybe a vacancy that needs to get filled fast, that's where a veil comes in.

With avail, rental listings can be published to 24 top rental sites with one click, completely free. That includes places renters are already searching, like Realtor.com, apartments.com, redfin, and more. No copying and pasting. No juggling multiple platforms, just one listing that shows up everywhere. If getting rentals organized and filled fast is on the list this year, start with Avail. Sign up for free at Avail.co slash bigger pockets. That's AVAIL.com slash bigger pockets. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off,

and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why 100,000. Hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, International Wires, Card, or Check,

and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. Welcome back to the bigger pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer here with Amanda Hahn, talking tax prep and tax strategy for 2026. We've talked about what things you should be looking for in your tax prep this year.

talked about the new changes in the one big beautiful Bill Act that investors should be paying attention to. But Amanda, I just want to talk about the stress that comes with tax prep. Like, it's not fun for most people. So how do you systematically recommend people go about doing this so that they can capture the most benefit, but that's not driving them crazy? You know, I'll tell you what I feel are the two main reasons people hate tax season. I mean, outside of just the fact that, you know, they have to pay taxes, right? I think one is record keeping. If you're someone who has not done good record keeping last year, this is sort of the end of the road where you're like, man, you know, now I got to go through my bank statements and my receipts and try to categorize all the stuff that I don't remember what I did or didn't do.

And, you know, really the best way to change that is just to have systems in place, right? Systems for your bookkeeping and accounting. If it's, you have the budget to outsource it, great. You know, take that off of your hands. if you don't, it's really just a matter of setting time aside on a monthly basis to make sure you do all of that. Because if you're like me, it's difficult for me to remember what I did a week ago. So for me to have to think about a year ago, that's the stress of like, oh my gosh, it's like a mountain of paperwork. And we know it's coming, right?

Every year a tax time comes. So I think just taking the time, set up a system that works for you, whether it's QuickBooks or Stessa or an Excel spreadsheet, whatever that happens to be. but getting the system set up so you are doing it on a month-to-month basis really will help alleviate a lot of the stress at tax time. I think the second reason people don't like tax season is the surprise. So the surprise of the anxiety of like a refund, am I going to owe a lot? The best way to alleviate or prevent that is with proactive tax planning. So for a lot of our clients, and that's why we focus so much on the planning,

because your tax bill should never be a surprise. If you're planning during the year, if you're meeting with your accountant throughout the year, before you buy properties, before you sell properties, before you open a new LLC or partner with a friend of yours, to always kind of have at least touch points on, okay, what's our income, what's our deductions, so that by the end of the year in December,

we have a pretty good idea whether we owe or we're going to get a refund. But I will say you can only have effective tax planning if you have good financial records. So that also goes back to just having, you know, clean bookkeeping. So we know we can monitor year-round. Well, I want to talk to you more about tax planning because I think that's a super important thing. But when you talk about bookkeeping, are there any tools? You mentioned QuickBooks, Stessa, both good tools.

Are there any new ones? Because I've been getting a lot of ads, honestly, for like AI bookkeeping. I don't know if that's just like people who want to say everything is AI right now. It's really just the same product it's always been. But are there any specific things that you think people should be looking for when they're setting up a system? From a tax perspective, the main thing you want to look for is the ability to track income expenses by property. That is what's required for IRS reporting. And also just for you as a property owner, if you have multiple properties, I want to know how each property is doing.

Right. And I think a quick tip, I would say, is to have a separate bank account that you use exclusively for real estate things. 100%. Yes. If you have an LLC for you. your rental properties, use that account. If there's no money in there, you transfer money from your personal account into that LLC account and then pay for the expenses. That, I think, helps to cut people's bookkeeping headache by maybe 80 or 90%.

Yes, there is a no-brainer for doing that. That's a great quick tip. So let's talk a little bit about tax planning proactively because I like this idea. So can you give us an example? Like, I'm going out to buy a new property this year. I call you and say, like, how do I plan? for this in the most tax optimal way? What are some of the things you're thinking about or some of the things I should be thinking about? Yeah. And I think, you know, again, it kind of depends a little bit on

the different facts and profiles of a specific taxpayer. So if we're saying, oh, well, you know, Dave, is not a real estate professional, a household with dual income W2, nobody is really able to claim real estate professional status. Then maybe a recommendation could be, you know, can we consider a rental property or the next one you buy to be a short-term rental. Why? Because short-term rentals, we can use the short-term rental loophole where you don't have to quit your job. Real estate could be a side hustle. You could potentially use the short-term rental losses against W-2 and, you know, other types of income, provided that you meet all of the requirements that still being hands-on and all those things. And so that part of the conversation then maybe kind of veers into where

should the property be? Should it be close enough where you can be more hands on? Or are you comfortable with using apps to be able to, you know, semi-manage or self-manage remotely as well? And then, you know, what kind of entity? Who should be on it? Is it one person, both spouses? So that's the fun part, right? The initial question is, I want to buy more real estate this year. And then it turns into a lot of different decision makings on, will have you considered this or that also to get the optimal tax benefit, too. Yeah, and I would imagine, you know, we started this section of show just talking about stress, that when you plan this up front, that basically takes away what you were saying, the stress of the unknown at the end of the year.

When you add a new property, it's only incrementally making your taxes more complicated, not like, you know, doubling it. If you're going from one to two properties, now you have double the amount of work you have to do for taxes. For sure. And it's just having even like a system could be a half a checklist whenever I buy new properties. Here are the things I need to put in a folder. the closing disclosure, the appraisal form, right?

I also probably want to make sure I have an entity set up or at least I'm going to call my CPA, let them know these things happened. So just having that already, so you know every time I'm expending my portfolio, these are the things I'm going to keep together. And that tax time is just a matter of sharing all those things in that folder with your accountant or with your bookkeeper, even on a monthly basis.

Awesome. Well, this is great advice, and I really recommend people doing this. Again, I know I keep saying this, but I just think in general, people get really excited about buying properties when they're first starting, which is right. And then like two years into your investing career, you're like, oh my God, it could have been doing this so much better from a tax perspective. But take it from me, take it from Amanda, just try and do this stuff up front. I promise you, it will be worth your time and money. It is always worth your time and money to start doing these

things up front. And I will say I unfortunately do meet people who historically are very model citizens when it comes to tax filing. If they just have a W-2 job, they own their home. And it's like always filed on time, filed by February or March. And then, oh, I bought rental properties. And then I got overwhelmed. And I just basically stopped filing tax returns because I didn't know what to do. But I think it's really important to understand if I'm describing you, you know, as a listener, it's really important to understand that taxes don't go away. So you will have to file your tax return. And again, the sooner you do it, the better you're going to feel, I promise you. All right. One last question for you, Amanda, before you get out of here. You said you're also a real estate investor. What are you investing in these days?

Oh, well, so I'm actually, I live in California, but I grew up in Las Vegas and I went to college there. So a big part of our portfolio has been in Las Vegas. So we continue to expand in Vegas. But I think my latest, our latest acquisition was in Florida. And I talk about this with clients as well. In the last couple years, we've gotten more and more into passive investments through syndications and things like that all over the U.S. And for us, it's just a change in priorities and our focus. We're in a season of life where we have two young boys that require a lot of attention with sports and all the things. So it wasn't like before. When we were starting out, it was a lot of, you know, burr properties because we had the time. We didn't have the money. We had the time.

and now we're in a different place where we have more, we have more of the resources, but not as much time to go after the properties ourselves. And we might change. You know, when the kids leave us and go off to college, then we might go back to doing burs or maybe doing our own apartment buildings. 100%.

I've done the same thing, done a lot more passive investing over the last couple of years, and that's the benefit, right? You get to a place where you've put in the hard work and then you get to choose. You get to choose if you want to do investing, passive. You know, I move back to the states, Now I've kind of missed doing some active investing, so I'm doing that more for fun than just not

needing to. But that's the goal. So congratulations on getting to that stage in your investing career. Yeah, thank you. And are you considering house hacking with your new home? I'm calling it a live in flip because we're not renting out any part of it, but we bought like an under, you know, it's a 1968 build. And it feels like it's 1968.

I'll tell you that. We got popcorn ceilings. still have those, you know, those intercoms that people used to have, like super old school. Like, they still work. It's pretty fun to use. Only in expensive homes, though, when they have those, right? I think back in the day, yeah, it was nice. But it's still perfectly comfortable. But the idea is we're going to start renovating it and hopefully, you know, spend probably in somewhere in the 200, 250 grand range, but we think it will increase the value like 400,000. This is in Seattle, very expensive market. So, but that's kind of the.

idea. But I'm calling it a live-in flip, but I don't know if we'll actually sell it after two years. We're kind of, we might live in it for longer. But we'll see. But we're going to do a value add to it. Yeah, I love that. And I think a lot of clients or I mean, a lot of newer investors think that primary home investment strategies are for people who are just starting out in real estate. But I think people will be shocked to know how many of our clients that, you know, are doing very large deals also try to optimize their primary home. 100%. To the end. And that. And, you know, to the end degree. So I love that. Yeah, the other place we were considering buying was a house hack. It was like an up-down duplex and we were going to rent out the bottom basement. Like I personally,

my dream home is like a primary that has an ADU above a garage that I can rent out. Like that would be the perfect situation. But Henry and I actually just did a show about this yesterday. We recorded it talking about how at every phase of your investing career, thinking about your primary residence as an investment makes sense. You don't have to for your life. lifestyle, but like, there are always things you can do to make your primary home a moneymaker for you if you're willing to make what I think are pretty small sacrifices to get those gains. Yeah, and the tax benefits are just, you know, typically pretty amazing for talking about primary homes.

Well, Amanda, thank you so much, as always, for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. And if you want to learn more from Amanda, which you should, go check out her two books that she's written. You can get them on BiggerPockets.com. You can always find them on Amazon. And I'm happy to say Amanda will be back at BPCon this year,

speaking and leading a tax workshop, as she always does. BPCon tickets are now available. Early bird tickets are for sale. They're the cheapest they will ever be. So if you want to get in there and get some hands-on advice from Amanda and her husband, Matt, come to BPCon in Orlando this year, biggerpockets.com slash conference. And if you want to hear the episode I was just talking about with Henry and I

talking about primary residence. It's episode 1236. It came out on February 6. Go check that out. Thanks again, Amanda, and thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. We'll see you next time. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter,

please visit www.w.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential,

or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. Thank you.