Ten Tax Tips for Selling Your Home

It is always a good idea to speak with your tax professional before selling your home.  It may be best to delay the sale, or not.  Any gain over $250,000 if single or $500,000 if married, could result in your gain being taxed.  The IRS provided the information below, which will help you understand the particulars of selling your primary home.

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If you’re selling your main home this summer or sometime this year, the IRS has some helpful tips for you. Even if you make a profit from the sale of your home, you may not have to report it as income.

Here are 10 tips from the IRS to keep in mind when selling your home.

1. If you sell your home at a gain, you may be able to exclude part or all of the profit from your income. This rule generally applies if you’ve owned and used the property as your main home for at least two out of the five years before the date of sale.

2. You normally can exclude up to $250,000 of the gain from your income ($500,000 on a joint return). This excluded gain is also not subject to the new Net Investment Income Tax, which is effective in 2013.

3. If you can exclude all of the gain, you probably don’t need to report the sale of your home on your tax return.

4. If you can’t exclude all of the gain, or you choose not to exclude it, you’ll need to report the sale of your home on your tax return. You’ll also have to report the sale if you received a Form 1099-S, Proceeds From Real Estate Transactions.

5. Use IRS e-file to prepare and file your 2013 tax return next year. E-file software will do most of the work for you. If you prepare a paper return, use the worksheets in Publication 523, Selling Your Home, to figure the gain (or loss) on the sale. The booklet also will help you determine how much of the gain you can exclude.

6. Generally, you can exclude a gain from the sale of only one main home per two-year period.

7. If you have more than one home, you can exclude a gain only from the sale of your main home. You must pay tax on the gain from selling any other home. If you have two homes and live in both of them, your main home is usually the one you live in most of the time.

8. Special rules may apply when you sell a home for which you received the first-time homebuyer credit. See Publication 523 for details.

9. You cannot deduct a loss from the sale of your main home.

10. When you sell your home and move, be sure to update your address with the IRS and the U.S. Postal Service. File Form 8822, Change of Address, to notify the IRS.

Investing in Web Sites for Tax Benefits and Profit

Investing in web sites can provide the same tax benefits as any home based business.  ALL expenses associated with the business of owning a web site is tax deductible.  Including, a percentage of your rent or mortgage, utilities, up of your home, miles driven for business, all business equipment, furniture and upgrades.  Not to mention, your cell phone, marketing, payments made to freelancers, online marketing cost and education involved in learning to make your business profitable.


Buying web sites is a popular investment, because the initial investment can be less than $500 for a new start up, HTML web site or blog, with original content and several streams of income which can generate annually, 10 times the initial investment

 

Virtual real estate is less expensive then tangible real estate yet the investment process is very much the same.  When an investor buys real estate, a home, duplex or apartment building, all of the upgrades to the property helps to increase the value of the real estate, and is added to the bases of the property.   The same hold true with a web site.  Web site upgrades, bells, whistles and gadgets, along with great content, increases the value of a web site greatly.  Many people encourage buying well established web sites, at a cost of one or two times the annual earnings of the site.

 

While this is good, for people who have experience with owning, managing and growing web sites, it can be a nightmare for a site owner who is not really sure how to continue the snowball effect and continue to generate the revenue that the previous owner was able to generate.

 

HOW SMALL INVESTORS CAN PARTICIPATE AND LOWER THE RISK

 

Web site investing is fast becoming an acceptable investment which can provide immediate monthly income.  And just as big business is moving into the web site ownership market, investors with limited investment capital can also participate in this unique industry. 

 

As long as a site has unique content, or provides an extremely popular service, a small investor can increase the value of his web site over time, and enjoy the same benefits as those who invest large sums of capital. 

 
There are thousands and thousands of stories where someone has loss their job, and started to blog, only to find themselves earning more than twice what they earned on the job.  It all about: the niche, the content, the service or product, (pricing) and the marketing of the site.

Banks and Investment Firms are already investing in large websites.  Small investors would do well to move forward as quickly as possible.

 
SEARCH ENGINES AND INVESTMENT IN WEB SITES FOR PROFIT

 

This is a touchy subject.  The latest update by the largest search engine on the net, upset the bank accounts of many webmasters, website developers and web site owners.  People’s bank accounts actually went from say, $1000 and more per month to less than $100 per month for the small web site investors.

 

More than ever, these recent changes have web developers and investors moving more toward affiliate income, rather than pay per click income.  And rightfully so, the search engines actions, reminded each of us that we much build web sites which can with stand changes by the major search engines.  This means we must build precise niches with a high level of content.

 

WHERE TO FIND WEB SITES TO PURCHASE

 

Investors can find thousands of web sites to purchase by using the search engines.  There are about ten major sites and many smaller niche sites which sell web sites. 

 

WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN PURCHASING A START UP SITE

 

1.        You want to be sure the content is original, if not, you want to be sure the service or product is a winner in the eyes of web visitors.  You can usually determine this by what other sites with the same content are generating each month, and how many visitors they have.  Your job, should you decide to purchase the site, is to bring visitors to the site to generate your monthly income.

2.       You want to be sure that you will be accepted into any affiliate program BEFORE you purchase the site. 

3.       You want to be sure that the site works properly

4.       You want any and all information on how to market the site

5.       You want full ownership of the domain name and all content, including paid WP Plugins

6.       You want to set a budget for online marketing, regardless if it is $10 or $1000 a month, and stick to it.

7.       You want to be sure that the site is indexed or is capable of being indexed into the search engines.

8.       You want to be sure that the domain name has a clean bill of health when it comes to the search engines.

9.       You want to be excited, even passionate about the product, service and information you are offering on your site.

10.   You want to purchase from a company or individual who will be there for you after the sale.

 WHAT TO PAY FOR A START UP

A start up web site can cost anywhere from $45 to $1500, unique content, several streams of income.  Websites which are sold on major web site for sale sites, usually have a suggestion for the cost of web sites, based on:

1.       Domain name, Age of Domain

2.       Content / Niche

3.       Traffic

4.       Backlinks

5.       Site’s Popularity

6.       Page Rank

7.       Monthly / Annual Income

 It is harder to set a price on a start up because there is usually no monthly or annual income to set the price.  It really depends on the amount of work that has gone into the site, and what the site offers to you as a new web site owner, and to your web visitors.

 

HOW TO PURCHASE A WEB SITE

You want to be sure that the domain name is transferred into your name.  Therefore you also want to be sure that the person, who is selling the site to you, has the legal right to do so.

You can use PayPal, especially if the seller is “verified” that way if there is a problem, you can contact PayPal and request a refund.

If the web site is over $250 USD it might be a good idea to place the transaction into escrow.  The escrow fee is a percentage of the transaction value, and is well worth the investment.  The buyer places the money into escrow.  And when the buyer and seller are completely satisfied with the transaction, then the escrow company releases the funds.  It is a great way for the buyer and seller to protect themselves.

 DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE BUYING A START-UP WEB SITE

1.       Do you know how much traffic the website gets?

2.       Do you know how much money the website makes?

3.       Does the web site work properly?

4.       Is the topic, keywords and content popular?

5.       How will you get visitors to your site?

This article was provided by VirtualRealtyInfo.com – a place where virtual real estate is available for investment, tax benefits and growth.  Visit www.virtualrealtyinfo.com  now.  Virtual Realty provides a step by step plan to market your website, regardless if your marketing budget is $10 a month, $100 a month or $500 a month.  Web visitors, Google accepted, Alex counted.