First time reading a 990-T. Check my understanding before I pay someone?

Item 5 is right as far as I understand it. The IRA is the taxpayer, the return is filed for the account, and the payment comes from account cash. Which is another reason the liquidity discipline matters, you need cash sitting there in April.

ember because the debt financing pulls part of the gain back in if there was debt on the property during a look-back window before the sale. The exemption for gains is general, the debt-financed rules are the carve-out. That interaction is exactly the kind of thing to put in front of your CPA rather than settle here, because how it applies depends on the specific debt history of the property.

ledger, on your threshold question, the $1,000 is gross income from unrelated business sources, and there's a specific deduction of $1,000 that means small amounts effectively net to zero tax. Those are two different things that people mash together, and the practical effect is similar but the filing obligation and the tax obligation aren't the same question. Confirm the current figures for the filing year with your preparer, they move.

Adding a cost line nobody put in the list. Somebody has to prepare the 990-T and that costs money every year, paid from the account. When I priced this out for a hypothetical single rental the preparation fee was a meaningful percentage of the actual tax. If your UDFI is going to be a few hundred dollars, you might spend more on the return than on the tax.

tally's point is the one that would change my decision. If the total drag is the tax plus the preparer plus the custodian's per-asset fee, the leveraged version has to beat the all-cash version by more than people assume. ledger, do you have both columns modeled or just the tax line?