Question

Prorating rental expenses

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 19, 2020
1 reply
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Bought a house in 2019 and have used, since purchasing it for personal use. Got it in mid-July and have used it for personal use for 168 days. I started renting out a bedroom to a roommate, starting August 1st through December 31st for 153 days.

Turbotax says it's going to prorate real-estate taxes and mortgage interest, but seems to only be prorating based on 153 days out 168 days, but NOT also based on the square footage (the room's 125 square feet and exclusively used by my roommate.

Do I need to manually prorate my real-estate taxes and mortgage interest for the square footage being exclusively used, but TurboTax will do the prorated # of days rented calculation?

Do I need to manually prorate and input all other expenses (supplies, maintenance, etc.) It almost looks like Turbotax is prorating other expenses based upon 153 days (days room rented out) out of 365 days.

Any suggestions on how I should proceed?

TurboTax Home & Biz Windows

Carl11_2

Employee

Got it in mid-July and have used it for personal use for 168 days.

That's but one of your problems right there. (there are more issues too.)

From the day you converted that room or rooms to rental space, that space was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT business use, and ZERO DAYS personal use.

For days rented, the day count starts on the first day a renter "COULD" have moved in. For you that was August 1st. So days rented is 153 and says of personal use is ZERO.

So fix that. When done, please use the MACRS Worksheet on page 37 of IRS Publication 946 at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p946.pdf to manually figure the depreciation yourself. I do "NOT" expect it to agree with the program.... not even close. So if my expectation is correct please let me know and I can show you "exactly" what you need to do so the program will give you the right figures without you having to elect to do the splits yourself.