If you have a black mold problem in your home, cleaning it up is a matter of paramount importance. Left unchecked, toxic mold can lead to serious health problems for your family and structural damage to your home. What’s more, it can reduce your home’s value. But how can cleaning it up affect your taxes?
Generally, mold remediation and mold removal are considered home repairs, and not home improvements, since they’re addressing a problem that needs to be fixed. There are no tax credits or deductions allowed for fixing a problem on your home; the only potential way around this problem is refinancing your mortgage to pay for the repairs, which might have a positive effect on the amount of taxes you pay at the end of the year. But of course, refinancing a mortgage carries its own problems with it
The best way to get a tax deduction or credit on a mold remediation project is to include it in a larger home-improvement project that’s deductible, or worthy of a tax credit. For instance, if your goal is to remodel your basement, and you’ve found mold down there, you can include the cost of the mold remediation project as part of the overall remodeling effort.
But even then, you should be careful; not all remodeling projects are tax deductible, and many will actually increase your taxes if they substantially increase the value of your home.
