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The 45 and the 180. And the one that cuts them short.

Enter the closing date on the property you sold. You get both statutory deadlines as real calendar dates, and a warning when your tax return due date ends the exchange period before day 180 does.

The date title transferred on the relinquished property. Both clocks start the day after this date.

The exchange period ends at the earlier of 180 days or your return due date, so this changes the answer.

This runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us or to anyone else.

Enter the closing date on the property you sold. You will get the 45-day identification deadline, the 180-day exchange deadline, and whether your tax return due date cuts the exchange period short.

Why this one is different

It shows the deadline most calculators miss

The exchange period ends at the earlier of 180 days or the due date of your return for the year of the transfer. A fourth-quarter closing therefore has a deadline well before day 180 unless an extension is filed. Most calculators return 180 days and say nothing about it.

Calendar days, stated plainly

Neither deadline moves for a weekend or a federal holiday. If day 45 lands on a Sunday, it is still Sunday. The tool says so rather than quietly rolling the date forward the way a business-day calculator would.

No signup, no cost, no limit

This is arithmetic running in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account, and there is no run counter, because a date calculation costs us nothing.

It does not pretend to be your CPA

It computes dates. It does not tell you whether your exchange qualifies, whether your replacement property is like-kind, or what your filing position should be. Those are the questions worth paying a professional for.

How to use it

  1. 01

    Enter the closing date

    The date title actually transferred on the property you sold, from your settlement statement. Both clocks start the following day.

  2. 02

    Say how the taxpayer files

    A calendar-year taxpayer's return due date can end the exchange period before day 180. Tell the tool whether an extension is coming and it will show the deadline that actually applies.

  3. 03

    Work backwards from the earlier date

    Identification is the deadline people miss, because 45 days is short and the rules on how many properties you may identify are strict. Put both dates in your calendar the day you close.

Why the identification deadline is the one that fails

Forty-five days sounds like enough time until you are in it. The identification must be in writing, signed, and delivered to a party to the exchange, usually the qualified intermediary, by midnight of the forty-fifth day. A conversation does not count and neither does an unsent draft.

The identification rules themselves are what compress the timeline. Under the common three-property rule you may identify up to three properties of any value. Beyond that you are into the two-hundred-percent rule, which caps the combined value of everything you identify at twice what you sold, or the ninety-five-percent rule, which requires you to actually acquire almost everything you named. Deciding which rule you are operating under is work, and it has to happen inside the same forty-five days as finding the properties.

The fourth-quarter problem

A closing in October, November, or December is where exchanges quietly fail. Day 180 falls in the following April, May, or June, and the taxpayer plans around it. But the exchange period ends at the earlier of day 180 or the due date of the return for the year of the transfer, and for a calendar-year individual that unextended due date is the fifteenth of April.

So a November closing that looks like it has until May actually has until April, losing several weeks. The fix is straightforward and has to be deliberate: file an extension for that tax year, which restores the full one hundred and eighty days. This calculator flags the situation rather than leaving it to be discovered later, which is why the tax-return date is shown as its own line rather than a footnote.

What this calculator does not do

  • It does not tell you whether your transaction qualifies for section 1031 treatment.
  • It does not apply the identification rules, count your identified properties, or check their values.
  • It assumes a calendar-year taxpayer when you select one. Fiscal-year filers and entities have different return due dates and are not modelled.
  • It does not account for disaster-relief postponements, which are issued case by case.
  • It does not know whether you engaged a qualified intermediary before closing, which is a requirement it cannot check.
  • It is not tax or legal advice, and no result from it is a filing position.

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