A bonus depreciation documentation checklist should begin before closing—not after a tax return is due. A net lease purchase may include land, a structural building, land improvements, landlord-owned equipment, tenant improvements, and tenant-owned trade fixtures. Those items do not automatically share the same owner, basis, recovery period, acquisition date, or placed-in-service date.

The goal of a bonus depreciation documentation checklist is not to manufacture a larger deduction. It is to preserve a consistent record that allows the buyer’s qualified advisers to determine what the taxpayer acquired, how basis was allocated, which assets may be eligible, when they were ready and available for use, and how the treatment may affect a later sale.

How to use this bonus depreciation documentation checklist

Organize the transaction into six connected files. Each file should identify its source documents, unresolved questions, and the adviser responsible for reaching any legal, tax, valuation, engineering, or classification conclusion.

1. Document exactly what the buyer acquired

Start with the executed purchase agreement and every amendment. Identify the real property, personal property, intangible rights, assigned contracts, and excluded assets. Reconcile those provisions with the closing statement, title materials, bills of sale, and any seller asset schedule.

This step matters in convenience stores, gas stations, QSRs, car washes, and other single-tenant properties because equipment visible at the site may belong to the tenant, a fuel supplier, a franchisor, a lender, or another party. Physical presence does not establish that the real-estate buyer acquired the asset or has depreciable basis in it.

2. Reconcile the lease with asset ownership

Review the lease, amendments, guaranties, work letters, tenant-improvement provisions, signage provisions, maintenance duties, casualty language, lender rights, removal rights, and surrender obligations. Expense responsibility can help explain the commercial arrangement, but it does not by itself determine tax ownership or classification.

Build an ownership matrix showing each material asset group, who installed it, who paid for it, who holds title, who maintains or replaces it, whether another party has a security interest, and whether the tenant may remove it. Give unresolved conflicts to the buyer’s legal and tax advisers before the depreciation model is finalized.

3. Build a traceable basis allocation

Land is not depreciable. The ordinary structural building portion generally remains 39-year nonresidential real property. Potential bonus depreciation ordinarily depends on qualifying shorter-life property supported by the taxpayer’s basis and the applicable acquisition, use, and timing rules.

Preserve the appraisal, land allocation, purchase-price allocation, closing costs, capitalized acquisition costs, construction or improvement costs, and any qualified cost segregation analysis. The schedules should reconcile to the amount recorded in the buyer’s books rather than operate as disconnected estimates.

4. Preserve asset-level support

This is an evidence map, not a classification table. Similar-looking property can receive different treatment based on its function, ownership, use, integration, acquisition history, and other facts. A study can analyze documented assets; it cannot create ownership or basis that the transaction did not convey.

5. Prove acquisition and placed-in-service timing

IRS Notice 2026-11 in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-06 provides interim guidance for the permanent 100% additional first-year depreciation deduction for certain qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025. The notice directs taxpayers to apply rules consistent with the existing section 168(k) regulations, with specified substitutions and modifications.

IRS Publication 946 (2025) explains that eligible property generally includes certain tangible MACRS property with a recovery period of 20 years or less and that certain used property may qualify. Eligibility still turns on the taxpayer’s actual facts, including acquisition date, prior use, related-party restrictions, basis, elections, and when the property was placed in service.

Preserve evidence showing when the taxpayer obtained the asset and when it was ready and available for its intended use. Closing, physical possession, construction completion, occupancy, tenant commencement, and business opening may occur on different dates. Use Stonecliff’s placed-in-service guide and used-property acquisition guide to organize the questions for the buyer’s advisers.

6. Record the rules that can limit or change the result

Asset eligibility does not establish that a particular investor can currently use a deduction. The buyer’s qualified tax professional should separately evaluate entity structure, business use, at-risk limits, passive-activity treatment, federal elections, state conformity, and other taxpayer-specific rules.

The file should also preserve the exit assumptions. Accelerated deductions can reduce adjusted basis and affect potential depreciation recapture. A hold-period model that includes a current deduction but omits disposition consequences is incomplete.

A pre-closing handoff for the tax professional

Send the bonus depreciation documentation checklist and supporting files early enough for the advisers to identify missing evidence before closing or before a construction or tenant-improvement timeline becomes difficult to reconstruct.

The brokerage role

Stonecliff is a commercial real estate brokerage. We help net lease buyers evaluate property fundamentals, lease economics, tenant credit, transaction structure, capital obligations, and the documents their independent advisers need. Review the broader net lease bonus depreciation guide, then ask qualified tax and legal advisers to evaluate the investor’s specific transaction and taxpayer facts.