The tax code sucks

Anyone wanna know what is wrong with our tax code here it is.

Lets say you have a rental property that you rent furnished, and you decide to sell it. The land, the building and the furniture all have different return treatments or that is they all have different rules governing the tax return treatment, which is likely the same on all 3 but to get there you have to figure out the treatment of all 3 types of porperty seperatly.

Lets say you sell it all at gain. The gain is capital gain (15% right now), except for the recapture of any depreciation taken which is ordinary (can be 35%). Simple enough.

Lets say you sell it at a loss. The loss is ordinary (as opposed to capital as is the case of the gain, except for the deprecation recapture). So you sell, your property at a loss, only if the furniture is fully depreciated you will likely have gain on the portion of the sells price allocated to the furniture because your basis is zero. It will be ordinary as you have to recapture your deprecation. Which means you could sell your rental home at a loss and still have taxable gain.

Nevermind that, lets pretend it is all a loss covered by section 1231. In this case the loss is all ordinary loss deducted from income in the year of sale. Capital losses are limited to capital gains plus 3000 of ordinary loss per year. (meaning if you have a capital asset, lets say Washington Mutual stock, and you lost 60,000 on it, and you have no other gains it will take you 20 years to decutct the loss). So you take your loss, but since it is section 1231 gain. You have to keep track of it, and any 1231 gain you have in the next five years will be treated as ordinary income to the extent of any 1231 losses you deducted.

This my friends is why all the cool kids are tax accountants.
and
Our tax code is something like 20,000 pages long.