My choice of wording was poor but I stand by using $0 as the basis for the sale of timber.  Whenever I have a client that sells some timber from his property I do not report any cost basis. However, I've never had a client that maintained a property strictly for harvesting timber.  All my clients situations have been property purchased with some wooded area that client had some good trees removed to put some money in their pocket.

And @Terry53029 , while I may not be a CHAMP,  I'm not an idiot.   While I find your follow up question 

---

@Terry53029 wrote:

So @dkh  if the same client sold the land for a profit you would use a basis of $ 0, because they never expected to sell it ? 

---

irritating, an oyster probably finds a bit of sand irritating also, so I'm off to make a beautiful gem.