Your bonus depreciation rate turns on 2 dates, not 1: when you acquired the property and when you placed it in service. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July 2025 made 100% bonus permanent, but only for qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025. Everything acquired on or before that date stays on the phase-down schedule Congress wrote into IRC section 168(k)(6) under the TCJA.
The rate table
For property acquired on or before January 19, 2025, the rate follows the placed-in-service year:
- Placed in service 2022 or earlier: 100%
- 2023: 80%
- 2024: 60%
- 2025: 40%
- 2026: 20%
- 2027 and later: 0%
For property acquired after January 19, 2025: 100%, permanently, regardless of the placed-in-service year.
What counts as the acquisition date
Under IRC section 168(k)(2)(E), property is treated as acquired when you enter a written binding contract for it. A fund that signed a purchase agreement on January 5, 2025 and closed on March 1, 2025 acquired the property before the cutoff, so a 2025 placement gets 40%, not 100%. The same building under a contract signed February 1, 2025 gets the permanent 100% rate. Placed in service means ready and available for its intended use under IRS Pub 946; for a rental, that is the date it is habitable and genuinely available to rent.
The rate is locked for look-backs
A common misconception is that filing Form 3115 later upgrades an old property to today's rate. It does not. The section 481(a) catch-up adjustment recomputes the depreciation you should have taken under the rules that applied in the original placed-in-service year. A building placed in service in 2024 keeps its 60% bonus rate forever; a 2026 cost segregation study and Form 3115 simply let you claim the missed 60% bonus and accelerated MACRS in one catch-up deduction on the current return.
Worked example
A fund bought a $900,000 mixed-use property in May 2024 (contract signed April 2024) and a study later identifies $180,000 of 5-year and 15-year property. The rate is 60% because the property was both acquired and placed in service in 2024. Bonus is $108,000, and the remaining $72,000 of short-life basis depreciates over its regular MACRS recovery periods. If the fund instead closes an identical deal in May 2026 under a 2026 contract, the same $180,000 is deducted in full at 100%.
Caveats
Self-constructed property and improvements generally test acquisition by when physical work of a significant nature begins. Several states decouple from IRC section 168(k) entirely and require addbacks regardless of the federal rate. And the rate only matters if the loss is usable; IRC section 469 can suspend it. Amadae's cost segregation screen models the benefit at the rate your dates actually support, and Amadae prepares the Form 3115 when a look-back applies.