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Passive Activity Losses Revisited For REPS

passive activity losses repsBy Jason Watson, CPA
Posted Sunday, May 25, 2025

Passives activity losses can only be offset by passive activity income. Generally, material participation changes the color of money, and the activity is no longer passive. However, rental activities remain passive even if you materially participate. You must materially participate as a real estate professional. Read that again.

If you cannot leverage real estate professional status or the short-term rental loophole, there is an exception allowing $25,000 of passive activity losses created by rental losses to be deducted against other non-passive income. But you must actively participate.

Active participation is a less stringent standard than material participation. For example, you may be treated as actively participating if you make management decisions in a significant and bona fide sense. Management decisions that count as active participation include approving new tenants, deciding on rental terms, approving expenditures, and similar decisions.

Sidebar: California does not conform to the IRS allowance for real estate professionals. You can read more in our state problems with your rental property section on page 119 for more information.

Jason Watson, CPA, is a partner and the CEO of WCG CPAs & Advisors, a boutique yet progressive tax, accounting and
business consultation firm with over 80 team members headquartered in Colorado serving real estate investors worldwide.

Jason Watson CPA LinkedIn     Jason Watson CPA Email

I Just Got A Rental, What Do I Do? 2025 Edition

Rental BookThis KB article is an excerpt from our 420+ page book (some picture pages, but no scatch and sniff) which was updated May 25, 2025, and is available in paperback from Amazon, as an eBook for Kindle and as a PDF from ClickBank. We used to publish with iTunes and Nook, but keeping up with two different formats was brutal. You can cruise through these KB articles online, click on the fancy buttons below or visit our webpage which provides more information.

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