Which of the following activities is excluded when determining if someone is a real estate professional?

When determining if someone qualifies as a real estate professional for tax purposes, certain activities are considered in this evaluation. Among these, employee work in a trade is excluded. This means that if an individual is employed by someone else and engages in activities related to that employment, it does not count toward the real estate professional status.

To qualify as a real estate professional, one needs to spend more than half of their working hours in real property trades or businesses and more than 750 hours in those activities during the tax year. The other choices relate to activities that would typically count towards this substantial involvement: real property trade operations, rental property management, and real estate brokerage activities all contribute to the evaluation of whether someone operates primarily in the real estate field.

In summary, the exclusion of employee work in a trade recognizes that simply being employed in a traditional sense does not demonstrate the necessary commitment or engagement in real estate endeavors that the IRS is looking for to classify someone as a real estate professional.