[발췌: 미국에서의] 주택 매각시 자본 이득(양도 소득)과 과세 조건

※ 발췌 (excerpts):

1. 출처: 미 국세청, https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc701.html

If you have a capital gain from the sale of your main home, you may qualify to exclude up to $250,000 of that gain from your income. You may qualify to exclue up to $ 500,000 of that gain if you file a joint return with your spouse. ( ... ... )

In general, to qualify for the exclusion, you must meet both the ownership test and the use test. You're eligible for the Section 121 exclusion if you have owned and used your home as your main home for a period aggregating at least two years out of the five years prior to its date of sale. ( ... ... )


2. Investopedia, Is it true that you can sell your home and not pay capital gains tax?

It is true in most cases. When you sell your home, the capital gains on the sale are exempt from capital gains tax. Based on the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, if you are single, you will pay no capital gains tax on the first $250,000 you make when you sell your home. Married couples enjoy a $500,000 exemption. There are, however, some restrictions on this exemption.

In order for the sale to be exempt, the home must be considered a primary residency based on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules. These rules state that you must have occupied the residency for at least two of the last five years. If you buy a home and a dramatic rise in value causes you to sell it a year later, you would be required to pay capital gains tax on the gain. The rule does, however, allow you to convert a rental property into a primary residence because the two-year residency requirement does not need to be fulfilled in consecutive years. For example, ( ... ... )

The other major restriction is that you can only benefit from this exemption once every two years. Therefore, if you have two homes an lived in both for at least two of the last five years, you won't be able to sell both of them tax free.

This act has been beneficial for home owners because it has significantly changed the implications of home sales. Before the act, sellers had to roll the full value of a home sale into another home within two years in order to avoid paying capital gains tax. This, however, is no longer the cse, and the proceeds of the sale can be used in any way the selers sees fit.


3. The Home Sale Tax Exemption (Find Law)