Cabinetry and Built-In Casework

Casework that is part of how a building is used as a dwelling or restroom is often treated as a structural component. Casework that is a store fixture or a parts counter is often treated as personal property. Treas. Reg. §1.48-1(c) names grocery counters, display racks and shelves, and refrigerators as tangible personal property even when contained in or attached to a building. Local fixture law does not control. A building remains a roofed enclosure used for shelter, housing, or working, office, parking, display, or sales space. Structural components include walls, partitions, floors, ceilings, and permanent coverings, plus other components relating to operation or maintenance of a building.

Whiteco’s six permanence factors are a court test, not a statute. They matter when cabinets are scribed to walls, lagged into studs, and would be destroyed in removal. They also matter when a fixture bank is designed to be reset when a tenant changes. Hospital Corp. of America applied the section 1.48-1 tests under MACRS. Metro National allowed cabinets as personal property on rental office and medical-building facts. AmeriSouth kept most millwork and finish carpentry with apartment buildings. Courts have split on built-ins depending on whether the item finished the dwelling or served a trade.

Publication 5653 makes the split explicit in several tables. The residential rental matrix treats kitchen cabinetry, counters, and sinks as section 1250 residential rental property, while kitchen appliances are class 57.0 personal property. The auto-dealership matrix treats cabinetry for retail activity — parts counters and sales-area cabinets — as class 57.0, and cabinetry in restrooms, break areas, and offices as building. Retail millwork rows treat cashwraps and decorative counters as personal property when they are store fixtures. Restroom accessories remain building in the restaurant table. Copying the residential kitchen-cabinet row into a restaurant, or a Metro National cabinet result into apartments, is a mismatch of guidance.

King Radio Corp. v. United States, 486 F.2d 1091 (10th Cir. 1973), held that a movable, non-load-bearing partition system was tangible personal property. Cabinets are not partitions, but the same theme appears: readily removable, non-structural items can be personal property even if attached with screws. L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Commissioner, 145 F.3d 53 (1st Cir. 1998), shows the other pole: a rack system that also supported roof and walls was a building. Integration with structure cuts against a fixture argument.

Electrical functional allocation does not classify cabinets. If a study costs casework from a millwork allowance, Publication 5653 Chapter 4 still wants a legal analysis, photographs, and a reconciliation to total cost. Residual estimation that dumps leftover millwork into five-year property is the kind of shortcut the guide warns can skew results toward section 1245.