Is vacation home rental income taxable under 14 days?

What the rule says

Publication 527 states the rule in two places. In the income chapter: if you rent property that you also use as your home for less than 15 days during the tax year, do not include the rent you receive in your income, and the expenses from this activity are not considered rental expenses. In chapter 5: if you use a dwelling unit as a home and rent it less than 15 days, its primary function is not considered to be rental, it should not be reported on Schedule E, and you are not required to report the rental income and rental expenses.

Note the arithmetic of the headline. Less than 15 days means 14 days or fewer. Rent the house for 14 days and the exclusion applies; rent it for 15 and all the income is reportable. Because the rule is a cliff, owners who rent a vacation home for an event week should count carefully before pricing the rental.

The condition that people miss

The exclusion applies only if you used the dwelling unit as a home. You use it as a home if you use it for personal purposes for more than the greater of 14 days or 10 percent of the total days it is rented to others at a fair rental price. So a second house you rented for 10 days and used for only 5 days yourself was not used as a home under this test, and the minimal rental exclusion does not apply: you report the rent and divide expenses under the normal rules. The calculator above runs this test and the 15-day test together.

For the home test, a day the unit was rented at a fair price but also used by you counts as personal use, not rental use. It counts as personal use for both the 14-day test and the 10 percent test. Days you work substantially full time on repairs and maintenance do not count as personal use. A dwelling unit is a house, apartment, condominium, mobile home, boat, vacation home or similar property, but not property used solely as a hotel, motel or inn.

Worked examples

Example A: you own a beach house, use it 40 days yourself and rent it to one family for 12 days during a local festival at a fair rental price. Personal use of 40 exceeds the greater of 14 days or 10 percent of 12 days (1.2), so it is a home, and the rent is under 15 days. The rent is not income, and your mortgage interest and property taxes are claimed as usual on Schedule A, if you itemize.

Example B: the same house is rented for 12 days and you use it 8 days. Personal use of 8 does not exceed 14, so it was not used as a home, and the 14-day exclusion is unavailable. Report the 12 days of rent and divide expenses by days of use: 12 rental days out of 20 total days of use, or 60 percent. These are our worked numbers applying the publication's rules.

Example C: the same house is rented for 20 days with 40 days of personal use. Now the rental is 15 days or more, so you report all the rent and divide expenses. Because personal use of 40 exceeds the greater of 14 days or 10 percent of 20 days, it is a home, and if expenses exceed rent, Worksheet 5-1 limits the deduction with the remainder carried forward. If you have a net profit, all rental expenses are deductible and you do not need the worksheet.

What you still deduct

Excluding the rent does not make your ordinary homeowner deductions disappear. The publication says expenses related to the home, such as mortgage interest, property taxes and any qualified casualty loss, are reported as normally allowed on Schedule A. What you give up is deducting rental costs, such as cleaning between guests, against the excluded rent. The swap is a fair one for a short rental, and it is the reason the rule exists.

See the Schedule A instructions for the itemized deduction limits. If your vacation home is rented often enough to cross 15 days, the full set of dividing-expense rules applies; read how to split expenses with personal use, and for whether a short-term rental belongs on Schedule C or E see the Schedule C or E guide.

Sources

• IRS Publication 527, Residential Rental Property (2025): Rental Income (Rental of property also used as your home), Personal Use of Dwelling Unit (Dwelling Unit Used as a Home, Reporting Income and Deductions). Read November 2, 2026.

Edition read: Publication 527 (2025), for use in preparing 2025 returns. Dollar limits and rates in this publication are for 2025; check the current publication and form instructions for your tax year. Where a figure is described as our arithmetic, it applies the publication’s rule to a made-up example. This page summarizes the publication and does not replace it.