Yes. Answering inquiries, sending check-in details, resolving a guest's problem mid-stay and replying to reviews are all work performed in the operation of a short-term rental, and under Treas. Reg. §1.469-5T(f)(1) work performed in connection with an activity you own is participation. The difficulty is not whether messaging counts. It is that messaging is the easiest category to inflate and the hardest to prove when logged as a block, and examiners know it. Logged by event, with the platform's timestamps behind it, it is one of the strongest categories you have.
Operational, with a credibility problem
Guest communication sits squarely on the operational side of the line. It is not investor work of the kind the regulation excludes (reviewing financial statements, monitoring the property in a non-managerial capacity), and it is customarily done by owners. In Mirch v. Commissioner (T.C. Memo 2025-128), the one category of hours the court accepted was email, because the owner had substantiation for the number of messages sent and received. The court found 7.4 hours reasonable for that task. Everything else in the log, hundreds of hours of cleaning and on-call time, was rejected.
That is the pattern to notice. Messaging survived because it had a record. It was also small. A log that shows 300 hours of messaging for a property with 40 stays has the opposite profile: large and, usually, unsupported.
Why "messaging 1h/day" fails
Owners who know messaging counts sometimes log it as a daily block: "guest communication, 1 hour," every day of the year, or every day of a stay. Three things go wrong.
First, it is a formula, and the Tax Court has consistently described formula-based logs as "ballpark guesstimates" rather than reasonable means of establishing participation. Second, it is contradicted by the platform. An examiner who asks for the inbox will see days with no messages at all, and the daily block becomes evidence that the whole log was estimated. Third, it counts elapsed time rather than working time. Checking your phone for a reply at intervals across an evening is not an hour of work.
The what counts as participation guide explains the underlying rule. The rest of this post is about the mechanics of logging communication so it holds.
Log by event, not by day
Treat each exchange as its own task with its own duration:
- Inquiry. A prospective guest asks about a crib and early check-in. You read the listing calendar, check the crib is in the closet, and reply. Eight minutes.
- Booking confirmation and house manual. You send the check-in instructions and personalise the recommendations paragraph. Twelve minutes.
- Mid-stay issue. The guest reports the dishwasher is not draining. You message back, call them, walk through the filter, confirm it is running. Twenty-five minutes across three exchanges.
- Review reply. You write a review and respond to the guest's. Ten minutes.
Each entry names the guest or the thread, says what it was about, and records the minutes actually spent. Over a stay, four or five such entries might total an hour. Over a year of 40 stays, that is a real and defensible category of 40 to 60 hours, sitting next to turnovers, maintenance and listing work.
Pull the timestamps from the platform inbox
Every hosting platform stamps messages with date and time, and most keep the history for years. That is corroboration you did not have to create. When you log an entry, note the thread it came from so it can be found later. STR Tracker's notes field on each entry is the place for that reference: "Thread with M. Ortiz, 14 Jun, dishwasher," so the entry and the thread can be laid side by side without searching.
Two cautions. Timestamps prove that an exchange happened and when; they do not prove how long it took you. Keep durations honest and proportionate to the message length. And if you communicate outside the platform, by text or phone, the call log or the thread on your phone is the equivalent record. Screenshot it while it exists.
Automations and templates: log setup, not sends
Scheduled messages, saved replies and automated check-in codes save time, and the time they save is not participation. Log the hour you spent writing the templates and configuring the schedule. Do not log the messages the system sent while you were asleep.
Where an automated message prompts a real exchange, the exchange counts from the moment you engage. The automated "how is everything?" on night two is nothing; the guest's reply about the noisy neighbours and your fifteen minutes handling it is a fifteen-minute entry.
Weekly total sanity check
Once a week, look at the messaging total against the inbox. A quiet week with two inquiries and no stays should show well under an hour. A turnover weekend with a problem guest might show three. If the log says four hours in a week where the inbox shows six short messages, something has been estimated, and it is better to fix it now than to explain it later.
Many practitioners suggest a second check at year end: messaging hours as a share of all hours. If communication is most of the log for a property with cleaners and a handyman doing the physical work, the "more than anyone else" comparison under §1.469-5T(a)(3) is going to be hard, whatever the total.
Sample week
| Day | Entry | Duration | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Inquiry, dates and parking question, replied | 0h 08m | Thread, J. Park |
| Tue | Sent check-in instructions and lock code for Fri arrival | 0h 12m | Thread, R. Ames |
| Fri | Guest could not find lockbox, called and guided | 0h 10m | Call log 4:52 p.m. |
| Sat | Guest reported hot water slow, messaged, checked with plumber, updated guest | 0h 30m | Thread, R. Ames; plumber text |
| Sun | Checkout reminder and thank-you, replied to question about lost charger | 0h 10m | Thread, R. Ames |
| Mon | Wrote review, replied to guest review | 0h 10m | Platform reviews |
Total: 1h 20m for the week, six entries, every one traceable. That is what a communication log looks like when it is a record rather than a number.
What to write down
For every exchange you count: the date, who it was with, what it was about, the minutes spent, and where the thread lives. Skip the elapsed time, skip the automated sends, skip the days you only glanced at the app. The free log template has a column for the reference, and the material participation log template guide shows how communication entries fit alongside the rest of the year. If you would rather log each exchange from the same phone you answered it on, you can start a free trial.