This is certainly not my area so I could be missing something basic. But after you sell a property, why shouldn't that force a reevaluation on past depreciation writeoffs? In idkyall's post, they mention the scenario of depreciating your property down to an effective value of $0 and then selling to buy another property to start again. You've argued that this only covers a fraction of your income. But at a basic level, if you get enough from the sale to buy a new property, then the old one must have been worth much more than $0 so one was wrong for decades about claimed depreciation ... right? In which case, it seems like it should be natural and fair to have to pay up on taxes from those previous years.

If I can invest in real estate, rent it out for decades, and then sell it at a significant profit (which seems to be the case in many in-demand cities), then why should _any_ amount of that rental income get a to be balanced against imaginary depreciation?