Can You Write Off Airbnb Expenses on Your Taxes?

If you rent your place on Airbnb for 15 or more days in a tax year, writing off Airbnb expenses on your taxes means deducting the ordinary and necessary costs of running that rental — platform fees, cleaning, supplies, utilities, insurance, mortgage interest, property taxes, mileage, and depreciation — against the income you earn from guests.¹ What you can claim, and how much of it, depends on how many days you rent, whether you also use the home yourself, and what kind of services you provide to guests.

Start With the 15-Day Threshold

Federal law draws a bright line at 15 rental days. Rent your home for fewer than 15 days in the year and the income is completely tax-free — you don’t even report it.² The tradeoff: you also can’t deduct any expenses tied to that rental use. Cross 15 days and everything flips. All the rental income becomes taxable, and the full set of deductions below opens up.

One boundary worth noting: this federal rule doesn’t excuse you from state and local lodging or occupancy taxes, which follow their own rules.³

Operating Costs You Can Deduct

Day-to-day costs of running the listing are deductible if they are ordinary (common for rental hosts) and necessary (helpful to the business).¹ The common ones:

Airbnb service fees. Most hosts pay a 3% fee under the split-fee model, and hosts on the host-only structure pay roughly 14–16%. Either way, it’s fully deductible.⁴
Turnover cleaning between guests.⁵
Guest supplies: toiletries, coffee, paper products, and other consumables.
Advertising and listing photography, including social media ads.⁵
Utilities — electricity, gas, water, internet, cable. Prorate if the home isn’t rented full-time.
Small maintenance items like bulbs, batteries, and smart locks.

Mileage

Trips to the property to handle turnovers, repairs, or contractor visits are deductible. For 2026, the IRS standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile.⁶ Keep a log with date, destination, and purpose for each trip.

Professional Fees

Accountant fees for the rental portion of your return, attorney fees for rental agreements or tenant disputes, and payments to property managers or bookkeepers are all deductible.⁷

Repairs vs. Improvements

The IRS treats repairs and improvements very differently, and mixing them up can cost you.

A repair keeps the property in its current working condition: fixing a leaky faucet, patching drywall, repainting a room. Repairs are deducted in full in the year you pay for them. An improvement adds value, extends the property’s useful life, or adapts it to a new use — a kitchen remodel, a new roof, an added bathroom. Improvements have to be capitalized and depreciated over their recovery period instead of deducted immediately.⁸

There’s a shortcut for smaller purchases. Under the de minimis safe harbor election, you can immediately deduct items costing $2,500 or less per item or per invoice.⁹ A $600 smart TV for the guest room can be written off in full the year you buy it if you make the election on your return.

Property-Level Costs

The big carrying costs of owning the home also become deductible against rental income once the property qualifies as a rental:

Mortgage interest, as reported by your lender on Form 1098.⁵
Property taxes. On Schedule E, they aren’t subject to the state and local tax cap that applies to personal itemized deductions.⁵
Insurance premiums, including homeowner’s, landlord, and supplemental liability policies.¹

Reporting these on Schedule E generally beats Schedule A, because they offset rental income dollar for dollar without the caps that limit personal itemized deductions.

Depreciation

Depreciation lets you recover the cost of the property over time. It’s a paper deduction — no cash leaves your pocket in the year you claim it. Most rental owners use the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS).¹⁰

The Building

A residential rental building depreciates over 27.5 years, straight-line.¹⁰ Land is not depreciable because it doesn’t wear out.¹¹ If you paid $350,000 and $75,000 of that is land value, you depreciate $275,000 over 27.5 years — roughly $10,000 a year in deductions.

Furniture and Appliances

Smaller assets inside the rental — furniture, kitchen appliances, carpets, window treatments — are five-year property; office furniture is seven-year property.¹⁰ Under current law they generally qualify for 100% bonus depreciation, so you can deduct the full cost in the year you place them in service.¹² A $2,000 sofa placed in the guest suite in 2026 can be fully deducted that year rather than at $400 a year for five years. The bonus rate applies to personal property and certain land improvements, not to the residential building itself, which still runs on the 27.5-year schedule.

Recapture When You Sell

Depreciation cuts your taxes each year, but the IRS collects some of that back at sale. Total depreciation you claimed (or were allowed to claim) is taxed as unrecaptured Section 1250 gain at a maximum federal rate of 25%, higher than the long-term capital gains rate most sellers pay.¹³ $50,000 in depreciation claimed over the years could mean up to $50,000 taxed at that 25% rate on sale. Skipping depreciation doesn’t help: the IRS reduces your cost basis whether you actually deducted it or not.

Prorating When It’s Also Your Home

If the same property is your home part of the year and a rental the rest, you can only deduct the rental share of shared costs.

Day-Count Method

For a whole-home rental with personal use, divide rental days by the total of rental days plus personal-use days. Rent 90 days, live in it 60 days, and 60% of shared costs is deductible (90 ÷ 150). That percentage applies to mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, property taxes, and depreciation. Days the property sits vacant but available don’t count as either rental or personal days.⁵

Square-Footage Method

If you rent only part of your home, like a spare bedroom or basement suite, allocate by area. A 200-square-foot room in a 2,000-square-foot house means 10% of shared expenses are deductible.⁵ A room-count method works if rooms are roughly the same size. Whichever you pick, document how you calculated it.

Schedule E or Schedule C

Most Airbnb hosts file on Schedule E, the standard form for rental real estate. But if you provide “substantial services” for guests — daily cleaning, fresh linens, maid service — the IRS treats the activity like a hotel business, and you report on Schedule C.⁵

That matters because Schedule C income is subject to self-employment tax on top of income tax. For 2026, that’s an extra 15.3% on net earnings: 12.4% Social Security (on the first $184,500) and 2.9% Medicare.¹⁴ Basic services — heat, light, Wi-Fi, trash — don’t trigger Schedule C.⁵ Concierge-style hosting with regular housekeeping does.

Can Losses Offset Your Other Income?

Rental activities are generally passive under federal tax law, so rental losses can’t offset wages or other active income. Two big exceptions matter for Airbnb hosts.¹⁵

The $25,000 Special Allowance

If you actively participate in managing the rental — approving tenants, setting prices, authorizing repairs — you can deduct up to $25,000 in rental losses against non-rental income. This allowance phases out as modified adjusted gross income rises above $100,000 and disappears at $150,000.¹⁶

The Short-Term Rental Exception

Airbnb stays often average seven days or less, and that fact rewrites the tax treatment. When the average guest stay is seven days or fewer, the IRS doesn’t classify the activity as a “rental activity” for passive loss purposes.¹⁵ It’s treated as a trade or business. If you materially participate — usually straightforward for a sole host — losses are fully deductible against any income, with no $25,000 cap and no MAGI phaseout.

The Qualified Business Income Deduction

Rental income on Schedule E or Schedule C may qualify for the Section 199A deduction, which lets eligible taxpayers deduct a percentage of qualified business income.¹⁷ Recent legislation made the deduction permanent and raised the rate to 23% for tax years beginning in 2026. On $40,000 of net rental profit, that’s up to $9,200 in additional deduction on top of everything above.

To use the safe harbor for rentals, you have to keep separate books, maintain contemporaneous time logs, and perform at least 250 hours of rental services per year. Rental services include advertising, negotiating leases, managing tenants, arranging repairs, and overseeing maintenance. Hours worked by employees or contractors count toward the 250, but you have to keep time records, payment records, and service descriptions for each person.¹⁸

Records That Back Up Every Deduction

None of these deductions survives an audit without documentation. Save receipts for every purchase. Keep bank and credit card statements that show rental-related charges. Maintain a calendar showing which days the property was rented, used personally, or vacant. For mileage, note date, destination, miles, and purpose of each trip. For the QBI safe harbor, keep contemporaneous logs showing who performed each service, what they did, and how long it took.¹⁸ The rule is simple: if you can’t document it, don’t claim it.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Tips on Rental Real Estate Income, Deductions and Recordkeeping
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 280A – Disallowance of Certain Expenses in Connection With Business Use of Home
3
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 415, Renting Residential and Vacation Property
4
Airbnb. Airbnb Service Fees
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 527, Residential Rental Property
6
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Sets 2026 Business Standard Mileage Rate at 72.5 Cents per Mile
7
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 414, Rental Income and Expenses
8
Internal Revenue Service. Tangible Property Final Regulations
9
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2015-82, Increase in De Minimis Safe Harbor Limit
10
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 946, How To Depreciate Property
11
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 704, Depreciation
12
Internal Revenue Service. Treasury, IRS Issue Guidance on the Additional First Year Depreciation Deduction Amended as Part of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill
13
Internal Revenue Service. Property (Basis, Sale of Home, Etc.) 5
14
Social Security Administration. If You Are Self-Employed
15
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8582, Passive Activity Loss Limitations
16
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 925, Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules
17
Internal Revenue Service. Qualified Business Income Deduction
18
Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Procedure 2019-38, Rental Real Estate Safe Harbor for Section 199A