By Joe Gose | The New York Times
As a real estate investor, Michael Clarke has learned how to roll earnings from the sale of one property into the purchase of another to save on his tax bill.
Last year, Mr. Clarke sold a residential rental property that he had owned for decades in suburban Washington for $700,000 and used the proceeds to buy a $1.2 million Dollar General building in rural Virginia. Recently, he sold another long-owned rental home for $580,000 and rolled those proceeds into the purchase of a rental worth roughly $800,000.
Thanks to a 100-year-old provision in the tax code, Mr. Clarke did not have to pay taxes on the gains from the properties he sold.
Known as Section 1031, which covers a transaction that is commonly referred to as a like-kind exchange, the law provides real estate investors a tax deferral on the financial gain of a sale if they roll the proceeds directly into a similar investment property within 180 days. The rationale for the benefit is that it promotes economic activity and that, by replacing one property with another, investors are forgoing pocketing their underlying sales gains.
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