I am pretty sure my rental income does not qualify for QBI. It is a home we used to live in, but moved out of years ago and decided to retain ownership and rent. We do not own any other rental properties. I pretty much just collect a monthly rent check, pay the tax bill & HOA dues and an annual extermination fee. I don't travel to the property and have had the same tenant for years. I certainly do not qualify for the safe harbor (250 hours) and TurboTax has reported this income as Passive Income on Form 8582 for the past 3 years (I'm not sure why that form was not included by TurboTax prior to 2021). Can anyone confirm that my election of NO for QBI is correct and tell me why Form 8582 was not generated for years before 2021 (if it should have been). Thank you.
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Yes, we can help. If you do not meet all of the requirements for rental real estate then you don't qualify for the qualified business income deduction (QBID). Based on your information, I would agree you do not qualify.
IRS Qualifiers - (QBID)
The following requirements must be met by taxpayers or RPEs to qualify for this safe harbor:
Passive Activity Losses (PALs)- Form 8582: TurboTax does ask if you actively participate in your rental activity and for you the answer is 'Yes'. As far as your prior years, you may be fine if your income was below the threshold shown below and your rental losses were less than $25,000. There may not be any carryover of PALs from prior years however you still should have had Form 8582 in your file. Check your prior returns to see if any of the income would have changed based on the information provided here. If not then an amendment is not necessary. If you decide it's possible your loss would have been limited, creating a PAL carryforward then it would need to be amended. If you had a profit in any year, it's possible any loss has been used up.
Active participation is a requirement to be allowed to reduce other income by the loss on your rental property. There is also an income limit that begins to reduce that amount.
Phaseout Rule: The maximum special allowance of $25,000 ($12,500 for married individuals filing separate returns and living apart at all times during the year) is reduced by 50% of the amount of your modified adjusted gross income that’s more than $100,000 ($50,000 if you’re married filing separately). If your modified adjusted gross income is $150,000 or more ($75,000 or more if you’re married filing separately), you generally can’t use the special allowance. This is because the special allowance is reduced to $0 since the modified adjusted gross income is over the $100,000 amount.
Thank you so much for that detailed response. I feel pretty comfortable with the decision to not claim the QBI deduction for our rental income. However, I am still confused by the inclusion of Form 8582 for 2021 & 2022 only. My rental property has never generated a loss and my Schedule E has reported net income in every year. I have also always claimed active participation in the rental activity. That is why I am confused about the inclusion of Form 8582 for those 2 years - wouldn't that only be applicable for passive losses? Could anything else have generated the inclusion of that form on TurboTax for those years? Thank you.
Note that the safe harbor is only that. meet it and you qualify for the QBI. Don't doesn't mean you don't qualify but then if you take the QBI deduction and the IRS inquired you would have to prove to them that the rental activity rises to the level of a trade or business (not defied in the tax code but by numerous court cases). Based on what you provided you wouldn't be able to do so. However, some taxpayers take an aggressive approach to the QBI deduction when it comes to rental real estate.
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