14 days: the personal-use line that can turn your rental into a "residence"

The rig is yours. Of course you'll take it out — a long weekend at the coast, a week with the kids in August. The tax code expects that. What it also has is a bright-line test for when a rental property stops being treated as a rental and starts being treated as your second home — and crossing it changes which deductions you're allowed, in some cases wiping out the loss you were counting on.

The test, in plain English

Your rig is treated as a residence (the IRS phrase is "used as a home") for the year if your personal use exceeds the greater of:

• 14 days, or
• 10% of the days it was rented at fair market rate.

Run the two examples every host should be able to do in their head:

• Rented 120 days, personal use 15 days: the limit is the greater of 14 or 12 (10% of 120) = 14. Fifteen personal days crosses it.
• Rented 200 days, personal use 18 days: the limit is the greater of 14 or 20 = 20. Eighteen personal days stays under.

Note the trap: the more you rent, the more personal room you earn — and a lightly-rented rig gives you almost none. A rig rented 60 days has the same 14-day ceiling as one rented 140.

What counts as personal use (and what doesn't)

• Days you or family use it count — including family use at a discount, which the rules generally treat as your use.
• Days anyone uses it below fair rent count.
• Days spent primarily on repairs and maintenance do not count as personal days — the working weekend fixing the water heater is not a vacation day, as long as the work is real and the day is mainly work. Keep a note of what you did; that note is the whole defense.
• Days the rig sat empty, was listed, or was being turned around are neither rental nor personal days.

What crossing the line costs

Treated as a residence, the rig's rental deductions get capped at its rental income — expenses are allocated between personal and rental use, and a rental loss generally can't be claimed against your other income. For a host whose plan leans on a depreciation-driven loss offsetting a salary, that's the plan gone for the year. Stay under the line and the normal business treatment survives, with depreciation computed on the rental share.

The only hard part is counting

Nothing about the test is complicated in October, when the August trip is a choice. It's only brutal the following April, when you're trying to reconstruct a year of your own usage from memory and campground photos. Two running counts — rental days, personal days — kept as the year happens, settle the question in one glance.

CloseFleet counts both from your trips and asks you directly about personal-use days in the gap check; the packet runs the 14-day / 10% comparison, and when you're near or over the line it raises the flag for your CPA — loudly, in the packet, before anything is filed. For one rig with straightforward books, the packet is free.

The federal sources

• The "used as a home" test — personal use over the greater of 14 days or 10% of rental days, and what counts as a personal-use day: IRS, Topic No. 415, Renting Residential and Vacation Property

CloseFleet organizes records for review by your CPA; it is not a tax preparer and provides no tax advice. Day-count rules have exceptions and special cases (repairs, family use, donated weeks); your CPA applies them to your facts.

Upload the year — platform exports, statements, the rig's facts — and get the CPA Packet: income reconciled, expenses categorized, mileage logged, depreciation sheet built, questions flagged for your CPA. Free for one rig with straightforward books.