Real Estate Professional Status and the short-term rental loophole are proven in hours, and the IRS asks to see the log. ProofHours is tracking software built for exactly that log: recorded as the work happens, organized by the categories the tests count, and exported in a format an examiner can read. The deduction comes from the study. The right to use it comes from the record.
The Problem It Solves
Talk to anyone who has been through an examination on REPS or material participation and they will tell you the same thing: the argument was never about the tax law. It was about the record. The tests are counted in hours. Hours are proven with documentation. And documentation built after the fact, from memory, from old texts, from a calendar that mostly shows dentist appointments, is where these claims go to die. The owners who keep their deductions are the ones who logged the work while it was happening. That habit is the entire game, and almost nobody has a system for it.
What ProofHours Does
ProofHours makes the log a thirty-second habit instead of a March archaeology project. You record the work as you do it: what you did, which property, how long, and who did it (you, your spouse, or someone else). Every entry is timestamped, so the record is contemporaneous. Then the software shows you, live, where you stand against the tests that decide the deduction: the 750-hour rule and the 50% test for Real Estate Professional Status, tracked for one spouse alone the way the law requires; the three most common material participation tests for each property (more than 500 hours; more than 100 hours and more than anyone else; substantially all the participation); and the average guest stay per property, so a short-term rental owner can see whether the 7-day rule is met. When you need it, ProofHours produces a dated, examiner-ready report with every test's result and an hours table for each property. No spreadsheets. No shoebox. No reconstruction.
Who It Is For
Short-term rental owners using the 7-day rule, where material participation decides whether losses offset W-2 income. Investors pursuing Real Estate Professional Status, where the hour thresholds are high and the scrutiny is higher. And anyone whose CPA has ever said the words "keep a log" on the way out the door. If your deductions depend on proving your time, this is the proof.
Software organizes proof. It cannot manufacture it. ProofHours will make your real hours unshakeable, and it will do nothing for hours that did not happen. That is not a limitation. That is the point. Honest records are the only kind that survive, and the only kind we would ever help you build.
Questions Owners Ask
The study creates the deduction. The log defends your right to use it. Run them together: an engineered cost segregation study to build the write-off, and ProofHours to prove the status that unlocks it against your other income. That is the whole strategy, documented end to end.
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