Cost Segregation Built for Property Owners, Real Estate Investors, Property Developers, CPAs & Tax Advisors, and Opportunity Zone Deals
Built from your own documents · Every component cites its IRS authority
Savings Calculator
Estimate how much of your property's basis a cost segregation study could reclassify to accelerated depreciation, and your potential first-year deduction. Move the slider and the estimate updates as you go.
Your property
Assumes ~20% of the price is non-depreciable land and ~45% of the depreciable basis reclassifies to 5-, 7-, and 15-year property for a self-storage. That ratio sits inside the 40–55% planning band we publish for this property type (a planning band, not a promise); an individual property can fall outside it.
Estimated results
An estimate from typical ratios, not a cost segregation study.
Estimated depreciable basis
$1,600,000
Estimated reclassified (accelerated) basis
≈ 36% of purchase price
$720,000
Estimated Year-1 bonus depreciation deduction
$720,000
Assumes 100% first-year bonus depreciation (IRC §168(k)), which applies to qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025.
This is an estimate, not tax advice. Actual reclassification depends on a document-based cost segregation study of your specific property. Figures use typical benchmark ratios by property type and assume 100% bonus depreciation, which applies to qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025; earlier acquisitions use a lower rate. Consult your tax advisor.
ClickDrag Finance prepares cost segregation studies for owners and developers of commercial and rental real estate, and for the CPAs and tax advisors who serve them; a cost segregation study reclassifies parts of a building's cost into shorter-lived property so the depreciation deductions come sooner.
Do I need a cost segregation study for my property?
It depends. A cost segregation study is worth it when three conditions hold together: your depreciable basis is roughly $500K or more for a study priced in the thousands of dollars (a pricing threshold, not a tax rule, and lower for a lower-priced report), the deductions are usable this year given your passive-activity position under IRC section 469, and you will hold the property long enough to survive depreciation recapture. If any one of the three fails, the honest answer is no.
The placed-in-service date decides which return a cost segregation study shows up on
Cost segregation does not create new deductions. It reclassifies parts of a building into 5-, 7- and 15-year property, so depreciation you would otherwise take over 27.5 or 39 years is taken sooner, and the same total basis is recovered over the life of the property.
Dec 31, 2026
last day to place property in service (ready and available for its intended use) for depreciation on a calendar-year taxpayer's 2026 return
5, 7 & 15-year
property reclassified out of 27.5- or 39-year building basis, so it depreciates sooner
100%
bonus depreciation for qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025
How it works
Qualify → Documents → Savings.
1 · Start
Answer two to four short questions: who the order is for, then who it comes from (for a client) or whether the purchase price plus construction costs total under $2.0 million (for your own property, or a family member's or friend's). Then you go to the right order.
2 · Documents
Upload your closing statement, trial balance and any AIA pay applications.
3 · Savings
Schedules and a component register your tax preparer can work from.
Meet Beverly
Beverly is our proprietary SI engine — super intelligence (SI), not artificial intelligence — and the reason a ClickDrag study is typically delivered 15–20 business days after complete documents are in. She does the document work of a full cost segregation team, and she never gets tired of reading the fine print.
Built by a team whose other projects include SpeechLab.ai, an Andrew Ng AI Fund venture.
Reads every document
Beverly ingests construction invoices, AIA pay applications, trial balances and closing statements and extracts the cost detail line by line — no sampling, no guesswork.
Classifies to the right life
Each component is sorted into its correct recovery period — 5, 7, 15, 27.5 or 39-year — using IRS ATG-aligned rules tuned to the property type.
Checks her own work
Every study is reconciled across three surfaces — the report, the Excel exhibits and the PDF — so the numbers tie out to the basis before anything reaches you.
Built and owned in-house
Beverly is our own engine, engineered and continuously trained inside ClickDrag — not a third-party tool with a logo on it.
Every ClickDrag study is built around Beverly — reviewed by our team, delivered to you and your clients.
Built for the people who own, file and book the property
The owner or sponsor, the CPA planning the year-end, and the controller closing the books.
Sponsors & Fund Managers
Depreciation is part of your investor story. Put the study behind it.
- Accelerated depreciation flows to investors from the year the property is placed in service
- A study supports the land/building split behind your depreciable basis
- Investor-ready schedules and workpapers for your K-1 season
CPAs & Tax Advisors
Year-end planning is here. Our studies support placed-in-service decisions.
- Line-item component registers and MACRS schedules for calendar-year 2026 returns
- Form 3115 support for catch-up studies on property placed in service in earlier years
- White-label options for firms serving many property-owning clients
Controllers & CFOs
Your fixed-asset register and our study speak the same language.
- Trial-balance-driven basis: the bridge from your TB total to depreciable basis is explicit and editable
- Exports tie to the penny — buckets reconcile to basis on every schedule
- One re-run when documents change; no black-box adjustments
Investing through an Opportunity Zone fund?
After a 10-year hold, on a sale of the fund interest, the §1400Z-2(c) basis election can exclude depreciation recapture along with appreciation, which changes how a cost segregation study pays off inside a Qualified Opportunity Fund.
How cost segregation works in an Opportunity ZoneCost segregation insights
All articles2026-11-05
Form 3115 Instructions for Cost Segregation Catch-Up Depreciation
For a cost segregation catch-up on property the taxpayer placed in service in an earlier tax year and still owns, the original Form 3115 is attached to the timely filed return for the year of change and a signed copy goes to the IRS in Ogden, Utah. Here are the lines, statements and §481(a) spread, from the IRS sources.
2026-11-05
Short-Term Rental Tax Loophole: How Cost Segregation Makes It Work
The short-term rental tax loophole is the rule that a rental with an average stay of seven days or less is not a rental activity under §469. With material participation, a cost segregation loss is then nonpassive, within the basis, at-risk and excess business loss limits.
2026-11-05
Unrecaptured Section 1250 Gain: What Cost Segregation Changes at Sale
Unrecaptured section 1250 gain is taxed at up to 25% for a noncorporate taxpayer. Cost segregation does not change that rate, but it moves part of a building's depreciation out of this layer and into ordinary-income §1245 recapture.
Placing property in service this year? Start your cost segregation study now.
Property placed in service (ready and available for its intended use) by December 31, 2026, for a calendar-year taxpayer, can be depreciated on that taxpayer's 2026 return, including the shorter-lived property a cost segregation study identifies. Report timing depends on when your documents arrive, so start early; we will email you when your report is ready.
Start your cost segregation studyTwo to four short questions, then your order.
Are You a Tax Professional?
Run cost segregation studies for your clients: send one document request under your firm's brand, we do the engineering, and you deliver the finished study.
Send a document request
Enter your client’s email; they get one branded email and a drag-and-drop page for their documents. No password, no checkout.
We do the engineering
Every document read line by line, each component classified to its recovery period following the IRS Cost Segregation Audit Techniques Guide.
You deliver the study
The report arrives under your firm's brand — or ours if you prefer a simple referral. You keep the client relationship.