Fencing, Gates and Site Features

Site features are not one class. Treas. Reg. §1.48-1(c) excludes land and improvements such as buildings or inherently permanent structures from tangible personal property, and it names fences, paved parking areas, bridges, and swimming pools as not personal property. A building is a roofed enclosure used for shelter, housing, or working, office, parking, display, or sales space. Structural components are parts of that building. A perimeter fence is an improvement to land. A bollard poured into a building corner may be part of the building. A movable bollard in front of a lift may be equipment protection.

Publication 946 Appendix B class 00.3, as quoted in Rev. Rul. 2003-81, includes fences among depreciable land improvements, with a 15-year GDS period, excluding buildings and structural components. Publication 5653’s retail matrix places perimeter fences with the parking lot in class 00.3. The residential matrix places a site security gate in 00.3. Attached trash enclosures and building-protection bollards are building in some tables. Those rows are examiner guidance. Activity classes that specifically include land improvements can override 00.3 under Rev. Rul. 2003-81.

The auto-dealership matrix is the clearest bollard split in the guide. Bollards protecting the building are section 1250 building property. Bollards protecting site items or inventory are class 00.3. Movable bollards protecting equipment inside are class 57.0 personal property. Guardrails in auto manufacturing follow a similar protect-the-equipment idea in that matrix. Function, not the word “bollard,” decides.

Whiteco Industries v. Commissioner, 65 T.C. 664 (1975), held that outdoor advertising signs on poles set in concrete were not inherently permanent. The six questions — movability, design for permanence, expected affixation, difficulty of removal, damage on removal, and manner of affixation — are a court test, not a statute. Rev. Rul. 2003-54 applied those factors to typical stand-alone gasoline pump canopies (class 57.0 personal property) and their poured concrete footings (class 57.1 land improvements). The casino matrix splits a pylon structure as class 00.3 from a sign face as class 57.0. Use function and the inspection, not a single row for every monument sign.

AmeriSouth allowed gate components among a small set of apartment items. That memorandum is not a national gate class. King Radio’s movable interior partitions do not classify a site fence. Scott Paper electrical allocation does not classify site steel. Do not write that fencing is five-year property as a rule; the regulation says fences are not tangible personal property, and class 00.3 is the usual 15-year land-improvement home unless an activity class specifically includes the improvement.