The Best Tax Shelter

You can exclude up to $500,000 of gain in the sale of your personal residence from your taxable income if you file jointly. You can exclude half of that if you are single. This is one of the best tax deals around, and would be even better if the real estate market was more robust and taxpayers were sitting on these kind of gains like many were before 2008. What are the requirements for this good deal? They're not too bad. You can only do it once every 2 years. You have to have owned and used the property as your principal residence for 2 out of the 5 years prior to the sales date. So is it time to start packing boxes and get that tax free income?