Additional Rules for Listed Property — What Is Listed Property?: Business Depreciation (2025 IRS Guide)

This guide covers “Additional Rules for Listed Property — What Is Listed Property?” within business depreciation. The following material presents the IRS treatment of this topic, including the qualifications, exceptions, and examples in the source section. Read the rules alongside the facts of your own situation before deciding what to report, deduct, or document.

Adapted from Publication 946 (2025), How To Depreciate Property, published by the Internal Revenue Service. This guide retains the source edition’s years, amounts, deadlines, and examples. It is guidance for that edition, not a statement that the same figures apply to every tax year.

Additional Rules for Listed Property — What Is Listed Property?

Listed property is any of the following.

• Passenger automobiles (as defined later).

• Business aircraft (discussed later).

• Any other property used for transportation, unless it is an excepted vehicle.

• Property generally used for entertainment, recreation, or amusement (including photographic, phonographic, communication, and video recording equipment).

Improvements to listed property.

An improvement made to listed property that must be capitalized is treated as a new item of depreciable property. The recovery period and method of depreciation that apply to the listed property as a whole also apply to the improvement. For example, if you must depreciate the listed property using the straight line method, you must also depreciate the improvement using the straight line method.

Passenger Automobiles

A passenger automobile is any four-wheeled vehicle made primarily for use on public streets, roads, and highways and rated at 6,000 pounds or less of unloaded gross vehicle weight (6,000 pounds or less of gross vehicle weight for trucks and vans). It includes any part, component, or other item physically attached to the automobile at the time of purchase or usually included in the purchase price of an automobile.

The following vehicles are not considered passenger automobiles for these purposes.

• An ambulance, hearse, or combination ambulance-hearse used directly in a trade or business.

• A vehicle used directly in the trade or business of transporting persons or property for pay or hire.

• A truck or van that is a qualified nonpersonal use vehicle.

Qualified nonpersonal use vehicles.

Qualified nonpersonal use vehicles are vehicles that by their nature are not likely to be used more than a minimal amount for personal purposes. They include the trucks and vans listed as excepted vehicles under Other Property Used for Transportation next. They also include trucks and vans that have been specially modified so that they are not likely to be used more than a minimal amount for personal purposes, such as by installation of permanent shelving and painting the vehicle to display advertising or the company’s name.

For a detailed discussion of passenger automobiles, including leased passenger automobiles, see Pub. 463.

Business Aircraft

A business aircraft may be depreciated using straight line depreciation over its useful life. Business aircraft may also be eligible for accelerated depreciation including the section 179 election deduction, the special depreciation allowance, and MACRS which allows the aircraft owner to immediately expense a portion of the aircraft if certain tests are met. These tests are based on the qualified business use of the aircraft.

Qualified business-use tests.

Qualified business use is defined as any use in a trade or business. To claim accelerated depreciation on business aircraft, you must meet the 50% test under section 280F(b) of the Internal Revenue Code and the 25% test under section 280F(d)(6)(C)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code. Failure to meet either of these tests disqualifies the aircraft from claiming accelerated depreciation, including the special depreciation allowance. Qualified business use is determined on a flight-by-flight basis and each passenger on every flight leg must be classified as qualified business or non-qualified business use. You must also maintain contemporaneous records to substantiate the following.

• The amount of the aircraft expense.

• Time and place of travel.

• Business purpose of the travel.

• Business relationship of each individual using the aircraft.

See sections 280F(b) and 280F(d)(6)(C)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Note:

If you claimed accelerated depreciation on a business aircraft and fail to meet either the 25% or 50% qualified business-use tests at any time during the class life for the aircraft, then the aircraft is placed on straight line depreciation. You must also recapture, as ordinary income, the excess depreciation claimed using accelerated depreciation in prior years over the amount which would have been allowable for the aircraft using the straight line method of depreciation under ADS.

Other Property Used for Transportation

Caution:

Although vehicles used to transport persons or property for pay or hire and vehicles rated at more than the 6,000-pound threshold are not passenger automobiles, they are still “other property used for transportation” and are subject to the special rules for listed property.

Other property used for transportation includes trucks, buses, boats, airplanes, motorcycles, and any other vehicles used to transport persons or goods.

Excepted vehicles.

Other property used for transportation does not include the following qualified nonpersonal use vehicles (defined earlier under Passenger Automobiles).

• Clearly marked police and fire vehicles.

• Unmarked vehicles used by law enforcement officers if the use is officially authorized.

• Ambulances used as such and hearses used as such.

• Any vehicle with a loaded gross vehicle weight of over 14,000 pounds that is designed to carry cargo.

• Bucket trucks (cherry pickers), cement mixers, dump trucks (including garbage trucks), flatbed trucks, and refrigerated trucks.

• Combines, cranes and derricks, and forklifts.

• Delivery trucks with seating only for the driver, or only for the driver plus a folding jump seat.

• Qualified moving vans.

• Qualified specialized utility repair trucks.

• School buses used in transporting students and employees of schools.

• Other buses with a capacity of at least 20 passengers that are used as passenger buses.

• Tractors and other special purpose farm vehicles.

Clearly marked police or fire vehicle.

A clearly marked police or fire vehicle is a vehicle that meets all the following requirements.

• It is owned or leased by a governmental unit or an agency or instrumentality of a governmental unit.

• It is required to be used for commuting by a police officer or firefighter who, when not on a regular shift, is on call at all times.

• It is prohibited from being used for personal use (other than commuting) outside the limit of the police officer’s arrest powers or the firefighter’s obligation to respond to an emergency.

• It is clearly marked with painted insignia or words that make it readily apparent that it is a police or fire vehicle. A marking on a license plate is not a clear marking for these purposes.

Qualified moving van.

A qualified moving van is any truck or van used by a professional moving company for moving household or business goods if the following requirements are met.

• No personal use of the van is allowed other than for travel to and from a move site or for minor personal use, such as a stop for lunch on the way from one move site to another.

• Personal use for travel to and from a move site happens no more than five times a month on average.

• Personal use is limited to situations in which it is more convenient to the employer, because of the location of the employee’s residence in relation to the location of the move site, for the van not to be returned to the employer’s business location.

Qualified specialized utility repair truck.

A truck is a qualified specialized utility repair truck if it is not a van or pickup truck and all the following apply.

• The truck was specifically designed for and is used to carry heavy tools, testing equipment, or parts.

• Shelves, racks, or other permanent interior construction has been installed to carry and store the tools, equipment, or parts and would make it unlikely that the truck would be used, other than minimally, for personal purposes.

• The employer requires the employee to drive the truck home in order to be able to respond in emergency situations for purposes of restoring or maintaining electricity, gas, telephone, water, sewer, or steam utility services.

Using the guidance

Keep the documents that establish the dates, amounts, and circumstances described above. References to other chapters, forms, worksheets, or earlier and later sections refer to the linked IRS publication. Check the full publication and its updates before relying on a rule for a different tax year or a situation not addressed here.

Sources and further reading

• Publication 946 (2025), How To Depreciate Property: Additional Rules for Listed Property — What Is Listed Property? — Internal Revenue Service; 2025 edition.

The cited U.S. government text is in the public domain. Source accessed October 28, 2026. Fynoptic has organized this material for educational use and is independent of, and not endorsed by, the IRS.