Yes. If an item is invoiced at $2,500 or less, you can deduct it outright in the year you place it in service under the de minimis safe harbor election in Reg. §1.263(a)‑1(f), rather than adding it to a depreciation schedule. The $2,500 ceiling is the one that applies to a landlord without audited financial statements; taxpayers who do have an applicable financial statement get $5,000. Anything above the line is capitalized and depreciated — which, with 100% bonus depreciation back in force, usually produces the same year-one number anyway. The useful question is where the two stop being the same.
What the $2,500 de minimis safe harbor actually covers.
The test is applied per item, or per invoice, as substantiated by the invoice. Delivery and installation charges count toward the amount when they appear on the same invoice. The safe harbor applies to tangible property you would otherwise have to capitalize: beds, sofas, dining sets, televisions, small appliances, tools, a replacement microwave. It does not touch land, the building itself, or structural components.
Two conditions matter. You need an accounting procedure in place at the beginning of the tax year treating amounts under your threshold as expensed — for a taxpayer without audited financials that procedure does not have to be written, but it does have to exist before the year starts, not after you total up the receipts. And the election is made for the year as a whole, not item by item.
Why the safe harbor and bonus depreciation usually land in the same place.
Furniture and appliances in a residential rental are 5- and 7-year property. They are bonus-eligible, and bonus depreciation now covers used property as well as new. With 100% bonus back for property acquired (contract signed) and placed in service after January 19, 2025, capitalizing a $3,000 sofa and bonusing it gets you the same full deduction this year as expensing a $2,400 sofa under the safe harbor. The federal arithmetic is a wash.
A worked example: $18,400 of furnishings for a short-term rental.
Take a furnished short-term rental placed in service in November 2026, with $18,400 of furniture and appliances across 31 invoiced items. Twenty-nine of those items are each $2,500 or less, totaling $11,600. Two are over the line: a $3,900 sectional and a $2,900 range, $6,800 between them.
Under the safe harbor, the $11,600 is deducted as an ordinary expense and the $6,800 is capitalized as 5-year property and written off in full with bonus depreciation. Without the election, all $18,400 is capitalized and bonused. Either way the year-one federal deduction is $18,400, and at a 32% marginal rate that is roughly $5,888 of federal tax savings for 2026. Identical. The difference shows up in three other places.
Where the two routes stop being the same.
State conformity. A good number of states decouple from federal bonus depreciation and make you add the bonus deduction back, recovering it over the asset's life instead. A de minimis deduction is an ordinary expense, not bonus depreciation, so it generally is not part of that add-back. In the example above, in a decoupling state at a 6% rate, routing everything through bonus defers about $1,100 of state benefit, while the safe harbor leaves only the $6,800 capitalized slice exposed — roughly $408. State rules vary more than any other item on this list, so check yours; I sketched the landscape in state bonus depreciation conformity and why your state may not follow the federal rules.
Bookkeeping and recapture. Expensed items never enter a fixed-asset schedule. Capitalized items are §1245 property, which means each one carries depreciation that comes back as ordinary income to the extent of gain allocated to it on a sale. For a four-year-old mattress that is academic. For thirty-one assets tracked individually across several properties, the schedule is real work that somebody bills for.
Durability. Bonus depreciation has moved with legislation repeatedly. The de minimis safe harbor is a regulation that does not depend on a bonus percentage at all. For small purchases, it is the steadier of the two.
What usually blows the per-item limit.
Sectionals, hot tubs, playsets, mini-split HVAC units, high-end mattress sets, and above all the vendor who invoices a whole room as one line: "furniture package — $14,000." Because the test looks at the invoice, asking that vendor to itemize can be the difference between one capitalized asset and a dozen expensed ones. The flip side is the obvious one: do not split a single unit of property across invoices to duck under the threshold. That is not what the safe harbor is for.
When the election has to be made.
Annually, by attaching a statement to the timely filed original federal return, including extensions. There is no late election by amendment. That timing is what makes this a year-end item rather than a filing-season one: the purchases you make in November and December determine what the election can reach, and the decision about how to buy — itemized or bundled — has to happen before the invoice is written.
Where a cost segregation study fits.
The safe harbor handles what you buy. It does nothing about the money already sitting inside the purchase price of the building: the appliances, flooring, cabinetry, fixtures and land improvements that came with the property and are being recovered over 27.5 years. That is the pile a study pulls apart into 5-, 7- and 15-year classes. The two tools work on different things — one on this year's receipts, one on the basis you acquired — and if you furnished a rental this fall and also bought it this year, both are available on the same return. The instant savings estimate will show you what the building side is worth before you commit to anything, and there is more on the furnishings side in how short-term rental furniture and appliances are depreciated.