No, but the honest answer has conditions. Recapture gives back dollars; it does not give back time, and the biggest layer gives back at a lower rate than the deduction saved. Whether the net stays positive depends on your hold period, your brackets, and your exit.
The rate arbitrage that survives recapture
Cost segregation deductions offset ordinary income at rates up to 37 percent. At sale, the largest payback layer, the building's straight-line depreciation, returns as unrecaptured section 1250 gain capped at 25 percent under IRC section 1(h)(6). A dollar deducted at 37 percent and repaid at 25 percent keeps 12 cents of permanent benefit even if the sale happened the next day. The 5- and 7-year components recapture at full ordinary rates under IRC section 1245, but only to the extent of gain actually allocated to them at sale, and used short-life assets rarely command prices anywhere near original cost.
The deferral that compounds
Pulling deductions from years 2 through 27 into year 1 puts the tax savings to work decades early. Money reinvested at any positive return for the length of the hold beats paying the same nominal tax later, which is the same logic as every retirement account, and it scales with time: a 10-year hold gives the deferred tax 10 years to compound. With OBBBA's permanent 100 percent bonus depreciation for property acquired after January 19, 2025, the deferral available in year 1 is at its maximum.
When recapture really does eat the benefit
The math can go against you in specific, predictable situations. Selling within a year or two leaves little time for deferral value to accumulate while the cost of the study remains. Deducting in a low-bracket year and recapturing in a high-bracket year inverts the arbitrage. Deductions that land as suspended passive losses produce no current benefit, though IRC section 469(g) releases them at a fully taxable sale, where they offset the recapture they correspond to. And states that decouple from federal bonus depreciation can tax the exit on a different schedule than the one that produced the federal savings.
Exits decide the final score
Recapture only collects in a plain taxable sale. A 1031 exchange rolls the liability forward indefinitely, and a basis step-up at death under IRC section 1014 cancels it outright. For a multi-year hold with any exit planning at all, acceleration comes out ahead on rate spread and time value together. For a quick taxable flip with no planning, the benefit can shrink toward a wash.
Amadae's cost segregation screen shows both numbers side by side, the first-year benefit and the modeled recapture at your expected exit, before you spend anything on a study. It is a screening estimate, not an engineering study, and it exists precisely so this question gets answered with your numbers instead of a slogan.