Confused about home office excess real estate taxes

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
March 8, 2026
1 reply
168 views

I am using the desktop home and business software, and am confused by the excess property tax entry for home offices (goes on form 8829). I am itemizing deductions, and will be exceeding the $40k SALT limit. I have read from a 2024 discussion post that in interview mode, I should enter all my property tax when prompted for the home office property tax question, and put in a 0 for excess real estate taxes. When I do this, TurboTax is putting a zero in the excess property tax line for 8829 which seems incorrect.

I have also gone through the IRS instructions for 8829 and it didn't help. The line 11 instructions included a detailed worksheet on what to put in the real estate and excess real estate fields, but the instructions only tell you how to figure the direct (column A) real estate taxes. They do come up with a value for excess real estate taxes, but do not specify whether they are direct or indirect. I suspect they are direct.

Any advice on how to handle this would be appreciated.

DianeW777

Level 15

My advice would be to calculate the home office property taxes yourself and then enter that as a direct expense for your home office. On Deductions for Schedule A, enter the difference, only the home space percentage. This should eliminate the duplication and show the correct amounts of real estate taxes in each section.

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