Cell towers and telecom sites
If you own the site build-out, not just the lease, it may qualify.
A lot of tower sites are a ground lease: you own the land, an operator owns and depreciates the tower and radio equipment. When you own the equipment shelter, backup power, or site access improvements, a study sorts what can move off the standard schedule.
The baseline
First question: who owns what.
Large wireless carriers and tower operators, many of them publicly traded companies, typically own and depreciate the tower structure and radio equipment on their own site. A landowner who signed a ground lease usually owns the land underneath, not the tower. Cost segregation only applies to property you own and depreciate, so the first step is always sorting out which improvements are actually yours.
What you can study, if you own it
The site work that can move to a shorter life.
Equipment shelters
The small building that houses radios, batteries, and switching gear is often simple construction wrapped around dense equipment.
Backup power
Generators, battery banks, and the wiring that feeds them exist to keep the site running, not to hold up the shelter.
Site access and fencing
The access road, pad, and perimeter fencing around a tower site are 15-year land improvements, the same rule as at any fenced site.
Foundations and mounts
Equipment pads and mounts built for specific hardware are analyzed on their own facts, tied to what they hold.
The honest part
Real property or equipment? The courts have a test.
A telecom shelter or an equipment pad is not a property type in our baseline data, so there is no standard percentage we can quote for it. We map it to the closest building type we do have data for and adjust from the specific facts, rather than inventing a number.
The underlying question, is this attached to the land for good, or does it serve a piece of equipment and stay separable from it, is exactly the six-factor test fromWhiteco Industries v. Commissioner. Courts use it for signs, fencing, and outdoor structures of every kind, and it applies just as well to a telecom equipment pad.See what makes a study audit-defensible.
- What a telecom-site study documents:
- Which improvements you actually own, versus the operator
- The closest matching baseline named, when no exact match exists
- Site work classified under the Whiteco factors
- No invented percentages, ever
Find out what your site build-out is worth in deductions.
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