Short-Term Rental (STR) Time Logs

By Jason Watson, CPA
Posted Sunday, May 25, 2025

We discuss time logs in our what time counts for material participation section. There is a ton of chatter about time logs. Spreadsheets with dropdowns, conditional formatting, and built-in pivot tables. Neat. So much effort is spent on the right data that people lose sight of four fundamentals-

Your time log must be done in real-time, or what the IRS considers contemporaneous. This is usually not a huge deal, but it is surprising how many court cases mention that the records were not kept in real-time.

Next, your time log must highlight not just your time, what you did and the location, it must also contain the time spent by others on your rental activities. This demonstrates your exhaustiveness or completeness in recording all time spent, not just yours. This is critical on material participation test #3 given the Pohoski tax court case.

Next, your time log must appear credible. To support credibility, you will likely need to recall details surrounding the time or moments spent. You will also need to be reasonable. In Escalante v. Commissioner, Tax Court Summary Opinion 2015-47, the rental property owner listed hundreds of hours for writing checks and reviewing mortgage statements. The Tax Court considered how long it would take them to write their own checks based on their own experience of daily life.

Finally, your time log must be corroborated with other transactions or by disinterested third parties. You claim that you spent 6 hours replacing a toilet, and you also demonstrate two separate trips to Lowe’s with receipts. The first is the toilet. The second has all the crud that you forget to get the first time. Perfect!

Keep a time log please! If you are looking for a way to easily track time, WCG CPAs & Advisors has partnered with REPSLog and you can download their app here-

https://wcginc.com/time

Also, since you need to track other people’s time as well, many rental property owners and short-term rental hosts will purchase a web-enabled cipher lock and assign discrete door codes to each participant. Each cleaner, repair person, property manager, listing agent, etc. would have a separate door code which can then be downloaded into a time log with time and date stamps.

This is especially useful for the 100 hours and more than anyone else material participation test. It also shows your level of sophistication should your time tracking come into question. Want to be really smart about things? Install a small uninterrupted power supply (UPS) for your internet router.