If a rental property is sold, the accumulated depreciation needs to be recaptured. 

I run the tax software to test the below two situations

Situation 1.) Depreciation is deducted each year.

At the year when sell the property, the capital gain split into two parts:

a.) first  part is recapture accumulated depreciation, the recapture depreciation when sale makes the adjusted cost basis back to its original cost basis. so recapture is just an offset / write off depreciation out of the formular.  

b.) second part is the true capital gain part, capital gain = selling price - original cost basis 

Situation 2.) Miss the depreciation deduction in the past. At the year when sell the property, since recapture offset the past depreciations.  so no  matter what depreciation amount in the past, even no deprecation in the past, the recapture would offset the depreciation amount, make total deprecation as  zero (accumulated depreciation= recapture depreciation) 

Comparing these two situations, tax result has no much difference. 

my understanding is: Miss depreciation in the past will not put a taxpayer in a position that he has to pay more tax when sell. 

But I am not sure why we have such a popular idea like below: 

" If you miss depreciation in the past,  at the year when sale,  you will end up pay more tax because you have to do deprecation recapture"