What this line means
Premiums you paid for insurance covering your rental property. This includes landlord property insurance, landlord liability insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, and the rental-property portion of an umbrella policy. Tenant-paid renter’s insurance does not go here — that is the tenant’s expense, not yours.
Does this apply to you?
- You carry a landlord insurance policy (property and liability) on your rental
- You pay flood or earthquake insurance on a rental property
- You carry an umbrella liability policy that covers your rental properties
- You purchased a specialized short-term rental host insurance policy
Easy to overlook
Umbrella policy premiums are partially deductible If you carry an umbrella liability policy covering both personal and rental properties, allocate the premium between personal use and rental use based on a reasonable method — typically by property count or insured value. The rental portion is deductible on line 9. Landlords with umbrella policies often deduct the full premium on their personal return or skip it entirely, missing a legitimate rental expense. 1 IRS Publication 527 — Residential Rental Property
Prepaid insurance is deductible only for the current year If you prepay a 3-year insurance policy, deduct only the portion covering the current tax year. The remainder is deducted in the years the coverage applies. A $3,600 three-year premium means a $1,200 deduction per year, not $3,600 in year one. 2 General filing pattern — umbrella policy allocation missed
Watch out for this
Deducting title insurance on this line. Title insurance is a one-time cost paid at property purchase and is added to the property’s cost basis for depreciation purposes. It is not an annual operating expense. Only recurring insurance premiums for property protection, liability, and casualty coverage belong on line 9.
Footnotes
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IRS Publication 527, Residential Rental Property, Insurance. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p527.pdf ↩
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IRS Publication 527, Residential Rental Property, Prepaid Expenses. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p527.pdf ↩