Federal Tax Research 10th Edition by Steven Gill, Gerald Whittenburg, Roby Sawyers, Debra Sanders, William Raabe

Exercise 24

Ernie and Julie Paltrow purchased a 57-acre property in Temecula, California in 2011. They began developing approximately 40 acres of the property for vineyards and incurred substantial costs to prepare the land for the vines, purchase the rootstock for the wine grapes they wish to grow and, of course, plant numerous vines around the acreage in hopes of eventually producing a fine wine. This took approximately two years and during that time, the Paltrows capitalized the costs until 2013, when the vines started to grow. At that point, the Paltrows put the vineyard into service, and now they wish to deduct the $800,000 vineyardrelated costs as quickly as possible. They placed in service only nominal amounts of other assets in 2013 and are expecting a healthy profit (more than $2 million) from the sale of the wine. Based on the law in effect in 2013, what is the Paltrows' best alternative for recovering these business-related costs as quickly as possible