Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: if you rent out a home you use as a residence for less than 15 days in the year, the rent is not included in your gross income at all — and you deduct nothing for that rental use. It is a genuine exclusion, and it is narrower than the internet suggests.
The provision, in full
Notwithstanding any other provision of this section or section 183, if a dwelling unit is used during the taxable year by the taxpayer as a residence and such dwelling unit is actually rented for less than 15 days during the taxable year, then—(1) no deduction otherwise allowable under this chapter because of the rental use of such dwelling unit shall be allowed, and (2) the income derived from such use for the taxable year shall not be included in the gross income of such taxpayer under section 61.
— IRC 280A(g)
Both halves are conditions, not options. No deduction attributable to that letting, and the income is not included in gross income. The threshold is the statute’s own words: rented for less than 15 days.
The three conditions people skip
- You must use the dwelling as a residence. The provision opens with that requirement — it keys to the same personal-use test that governs the rest of the section.
- Actually rented for less than 15 days. Not offered, not available — rented. And it is a hard edge: at 15 days the exclusion is gone entirely, not proportionally.
- The rent must be real. The exclusion applies to what you actually charged. It is not a licence to invent a number.
Where the cabin case fits
This is the one situation where a short let of a family cabin is genuinely tax-free: a fortnight during a local event, a race weekend, a festival. Two weeks of rent, excluded outright.
But note how it interacts with the rest of the section. Renting to a family member does not help you here either — their days are your personal use — and going past fourteen rented days does not phase the benefit out, it removes it.
What it does not do
It does not make the property’s ordinary expenses deductible, it does not change how the property is treated for any other purpose, and it does not apply to a property you do not use as a residence. It is a narrow exclusion for a genuinely short let, and its value is real precisely because it is narrow.
Related: why family rent does not help · selling a second home.
General information drawn from the Internal Revenue Code and IRS publications, not legal or tax advice. Co-ownership structures, partition rights, deeds and recording are STATE law and differ materially. Insurance wording controls what is covered, and a seasonally unoccupied property is treated differently by different insurers. We sell no property and receive nothing from any insurer.