Dental practices
Every chair in your practice is a piece of equipment. Depreciate it that way.
A dental office is dense with plumbing, gas, and vacuum lines that exist only to run the chairs around them. The default schedule treats your whole building as one 39-year asset. A study looks chair by chair.
The baseline
Medical and dental offices share a category. We go deeper on the chairs.
Dental practices already fall inside the medical and dental office classification, so a study starts from that baseline. What makes a dental buildout different is the plumbing, gas, and vacuum lines that run to every chair, the shielding around imaging equipment, and the cabinetry built around all of it.See the broader medical and dental picture.
What reclassifies
The hookups rule, chair by chair.
Operatory plumbing, gas, and vacuum lines
The water line to the cuspidor, compressed air, gas lines, and the central vacuum system all exist to run the dental chair and handpieces, not to serve the building generally.
Radiology and imaging shielding
Lead-lined walls and barriers built around X-ray and imaging equipment are analyzed on their own facts: does the shielding exist for that specific equipment, or is it part of a wall it happens to sit inside?
Cabinetry and casework
Built-in cabinets store instruments and supplies at every chair. Whether a cabinet moves to a shorter life depends on how it is built and attached, not on how much of it you have.
This comes straight from the case law. InDuaine v. Commissioner, the plumbing, gas lines, and electrical conduits that served specific equipment qualified as personal property, while the slab and the surrounding surfaces stayed with the building. The IRS's own audit guide cites the case for exactly this kind of equipment run.
The honest part
Imaging shielding is a fact question, not a blanket rule.
Some studies assume every wall around an X-ray unit qualifies for a short life because it holds lead shielding. The evidence has to support that. InMetro National v. Commissioner, removable parts qualified as personal property when the buildout was analyzed part by part, while restroom partitions and false ceilings stayed real property. InMallinckrodt v. Commissioner, parts built into the wall stayed with the building even though they were not load-bearing.
We classify your shielding and cabinetry to what is actually there, with photos and records behind the call.See what makes a study audit-defensible.
- What a dental study sorts out:
- Chair plumbing, gas, and vacuum hookups
- Imaging shielding, classified to the evidence
- Cabinetry tested by how it is built and attached
- Site work like parking and lighting at 15 years
A modeled example
Here is what the math can look like.
This is not a real client. It is a modeled example, built the same way our engine works, so you can see the shape of the outcome. A stand-alone dental building in Franklin, TN, about 4,200 square feet, bought for $1,320,000: after separating out the land, about 39% of the building's value, roughly $422,000, can move to short-life property. That is worth about $156,100 in year-one tax savings at a 37% marginal tax rate.
Your own number depends on your building.See more modeled examples across property types, or run your free estimate to see your range.
Your chairs already paid for these deductions.
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