Deducting house depreciation value from salary income – while renovating, and until finding tenants

Hi everyone,

I'm about to buy a detached house with the intention to rent it out, and I'm hoping you can help me understand some info about possible deductions.

Here are my questions:

1 – That's a basic assumption I want to make sure is correct – When buying a house as an individual and renting it to tenants, the building value depreciation can be deducted from my total income tax , which is the combination of the monthly rent I get and normal job salary.

2 – I'm planning on doing some of the house renovation myself, and it might take some time. On the renovation period, while I'm not renting the house yet, can I still deduct the depreciation value? If so, is there a limit to the renovation duration?

3 – If I'm posting the house on the market but can't find a tenant for a while, can I still deduct the depreciation value for that period? If so, is there a limit to that duration?

4 – I came across this article, which states:

Once you receive rental income from tenants, you are a “business” and can deduct business expenses, including travel expenses

…

Therefore, for example, if you are full-time in IT with a side hustle teaching English to private students, which of course you carefully and lawfully declare on your taxes, you cannot deduct an English textbook (a “remuneration” deduction) from your main “salary” (e.g, from IT work). Good news, though: they classify rental income as “salary”. Therefore, not only can your deductions from real estate lower taxes on your rental income, they can also lower your day job’s income taxes.

Is that true? Does that actually mean I can deduct renovation costs, travel expenses to my property, etc, from my salary based income tax?

Thanks.