Capital Gains offset by loss on assigned debt

[Marcus Welson]

Hello fellow posters. I have an unplanned capital gain over several decades due to a property interest I inherited. I also have the opportunity to be assigned a debt owed to a professional services company. It is likely the debt may not be collectable as the deadbeat clients are keeping everything on an under the table cash basis. Rather than take a complete loss on the uncollectable debt, can I take the assigned debt, make collection efforts and upon failure to collect declare the loss to offset the capital gains? I believe in practice it does not actually offset the capital gains but reduces my taxable income dollar for dollar with the loss, as long as my Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) is under $150K. Tis dollar for dollar reduction should equate to getting me down to the same amount as if I did not have the capital gains. 

Can someone who has seen this before please confirm if the above is correct and am I missing anything or need to consider anything else. 

Thank you for your help. 

[Chris Seveney]

@Marcus Welson

Talk to your cpa but I am 99% sure you cannot write off that debt - as even though it’s assigned to you - you did not pay for it

For example I cannot buy a $500,000 mortgage that was lost to a tax lien for $10 and then write off $499,990 otherwise I know a lot of people who wouldn’t pay any taxes

I could write off the $10 which is what I paid for it