The “Augusta rule” takes its name from the homeowners who rent their houses to visitors during the Masters each April. The mechanics live in §280A(g), and they are unusually generous: if you rent a dwelling that you use as a residence for fewer than 15 days in the year, you exclude the rental income from gross income entirely. Not deferred — excluded. For a business owner, that single sentence opens a clean, recurring planning move best understood through the character-amount-timing lens.

The statute

Under §280A(g), if a dwelling unit is used as a residence and is rented for fewer than 15 days during the taxable year, no rental income is included in the taxpayer’s gross income, and no deductions attributable to the rental (beyond those otherwise allowable, such as mortgage interest and property taxes) are permitted. The play: a business owner rents their own home to their own business — for board meetings, planning retreats, or client functions — for fourteen days or fewer each year, at a defensible market rate. The business deducts the rent; the owner excludes the income.

YOUR BUSINESSS-corp / LLC / partnershipYOUhome used as your residencerents itFMV rent, ≤ 14 days/yr§162 ordinary business deductionCHAR.AMOUNT§280A(g): the rent is EXCLUDEDfrom your income entirelyNet effect: dollars leave the business as a deduction and reach you tax-free —but only if the meetings are real, the rent is at market, and it is documented.
The Augusta rule as a closed loop: the business takes a §162 deduction, the owner excludes the receipt under §280A(g).

Why it is a character, amount, and timing play

Read against the three variables, the move is elegant on every axis. Character It converts what would otherwise be salary or a dividend — ordinary income, possibly payroll-taxed — into excluded income, the best character there is, while creating an ordinary §162 deduction on the business side. Amount The income inclusion to the owner is zero; the deductible amount to the business is the market rent times up to fourteen days, which must be substantiated with genuine comparables. Timing It resets every year — an annual, repeatable shift, capped at fourteen days each time, documented contemporaneously.

The guardrails that keep it real

The benefit is proportional to the discipline behind it. The fifteen-day line is a cliff, not a ramp: rent for fifteen days and the entire exclusion is lost and ordinary rental rules apply. The rent must be at fair market value, supported by quotes from comparable venues — not a number reverse-engineered to a target deduction — and the meetings must have a real business purpose, with minutes and an agenda. Expect the business to issue a Form 1099 and plan the owner’s reporting around the exclusion. Used this way, the Augusta rule is a durable, defensible piece of an owner’s annual plan; used carelessly, it is an easy adjustment on exam. Building the documentation file is exactly the kind of work our membership handles as a matter of routine.