Oh that's something I hadn't considered at all! I bought the furniture back in October but didn't actually set it up and start using it until November. Does the "placed in service" date mean when I bought it or when I actually started using it? And what's this half-year convention thing?

The "placed in service" date is when the property is ready and available for its intended use - so that would be November when you set it up, not when you purchased it in October. The half-year convention is a simplification rule that assumes you placed assets in service halfway through the year, regardless of when you actually started using them. So for the first year of a 7-year property with straight-line depreciation, you'd take 1/14th of the cost (half of 1/7th). However, if you place more than 40% of your total assets for the year in service during the last 3 months, you have to use the mid-quarter convention instead, which is more complicated and bases your first-year depreciation on which quarter you placed the asset in service.

I use TurboTax Self-Employed and it handles depreciation pretty well. When you get to the business expenses section, there's a separate category for assets that need to be depreciated. Just follow the prompts and it'll ask for purchase date, cost, and business use percentage. It automatically applies the correct MACRS schedule for office furniture (7 years). Office furniture isn't "listed property" so you'd select "no" for that question.

What about the LLC protection itself? Does it actually do anything for you besides potential tax benefits? Like protecting personal assets if a trade somehow went catastrophically wrong?

The LLC provides some asset protection, but it's limited for trading activities. It mainly protects against business creditors, but since brokerages require personal guarantees, the protection for trading losses is minimal. The main benefit was being able to establish a separate business entity for tax purposes. For catastrophic trading scenarios, the LLC wouldn't protect me from losses on trades I authorized. Where it does help is separating my trading assets from personal assets for general liability purposes. I still maintain separate accounts, separate records, and never commingle personal and business funds, which strengthens both the liability protection and the tax treatment as a business.

Does making the mark-to-market election mean ALL your investments have to be treated that way? I have some long-term holdings I definitely don't want treated as ordinary income when I eventually sell.

This is really helpful, thanks! Is there any way to check for the "approved" status, or do they only tell you once the refund is actually sent? The IRS tracker just shows "accepted" with no further details.

The "Where's My Refund" tool on the IRS website or app will update to show "approved" status once they reach that stage. It will then give you an actual refund date. Some people never see the "approved" status and just go straight to "refund sent" if the processing happens quickly. If you filed electronically with direct deposit and have a simple return, you might see your refund in your account before the tracker even updates. The tool sometimes lags behind the actual processing by a day or two. But if you're at 21+ days since acceptance with no update, that's when you might want to call and check if there's an issue.

Credit Karma (now Cash App Taxes) is reliable. I've used them for 3 years with no issues. Processing time has nothing to do with which software you used - it depends on your return complexity and IRS workload. Check the IRS "Where's My Refund" tool or IRS2Go app for the most current status. If it's only been 3 days since acceptance, just give it time. Most refunds come within 21 days.

Can a real estate agent really provide documentation that would satisfy the IRS though? I'm worried about getting audited and having to justify my numbers.

What you want is documentation showing how you arrived at a reasonable allocation, not necessarily an official appraisal. The IRS recognizes that determining exact land values isn't an exact science. A realtor can provide comparative market analyses (CMAs) of similar properties showing their land-to-building ratios, which demonstrates you used a reasonable method based on actual market data. If you're particularly concerned about audit risk, you could have the realtor write a brief letter explaining the methodology used to determine the typical ratio in your area, and keep this with your tax records. The key is being able to show you made a good faith effort to determine an accurate and reasonable allocation, rather than just making up numbers.

Is this still true with the 2025 tax year changes? I thought there was something about this rule being modified.

1 I thought about that, but wouldn't that potentially cause me to be underwithholding federal taxes? I'm worried about ending up with a big tax bill or underpayment penalties when filing time comes around.

9 It could potentially result in underwithholding if not calculated carefully. The key is to only reduce your federal withholding by the amount of the excess SS tax, not more. You'd need to calculate how much extra SS tax is being withheld per pay period and adjust accordingly. You generally won't face underpayment penalties if you've paid at least 90% of your current year tax liability or 100% of your prior year tax liability through withholding (110% if your AGI was over $150,000). Since you're only adjusting to offset the SS overwithholding, you should still meet these safe harbor provisions if your withholding was otherwise appropriate.

8 Employers generally won't issue a corrected W-2 for SS overwithholding in multiple-employer situations. The W-2 from each employer should correctly reflect what they actually withheld, even if the combined amount exceeds the maximum. The IRS expects you to reconcile this on your tax return rather than having employers issue corrected W-2s. This is specifically addressed in the instructions for Form 1040, where you claim the excess Social Security tax withholding as a credit.