Rent part of my home for part of the year

Choose I rented out part of my home to start.

Please see this answer from Marketstar:  PY Rental

Mortgage interest and property taxes are divided between personal (Schedule A, itemized deductions) and rental use (Schedule E) proportional to the number of days used for each and square footage rented

Your formula is as follows: square footage of rental space/ total square footage of house times days rented/365 to be allocated as a rental expense

For instance, if you have $10,000 in mortgage interest and rent 25% of your floor space for 6 months, multiply 10000 x .25 x .5 = $1250 to allocate as a rental expenses. the balance as a Schedule A, itemized deduction.

So, you will enter a portion of mortgage interest and property taxes in both areas.

To enter personal mortgage interest and property taxes:

• Type in mortgage interest in the search box, top right of your screen
• Hit the Enter key
• Click jump to mortgage interest in the search results
• Follow the prompts and online instructions
• To enter rental expenses, type in rental property and follow the above instructions

There is one screen where for your specific situation the question is wrong. I suspect you are on that very screen in the Assets/Depreciation section. The question asked is, "percentage of time I used this item for this business in 2020 (e.g.;80%)

That particular question should be "percentage of floor space I used for this business in 2020".  So enter the percentage of floor space that is exclusive to the renter, and all the numbers will be figured correctly then. Keep in mind you were asked for and entered the percentage of floor space on an earlier screen also. So you should be entering that same number here.