Get your taxes done using TurboTax

Hello, I have the TurboTax Premier CD Window version that I bought at the local Staples store, and I did the “check for update” and it is up to date.  My TurboTax software is not showing what you have per your reply.  I deleted all the entries in the “investment income” and the “less common income – sale of home” sections, and re-input the following:

In the “less common income” section, I opened the “sale of home” topic and the screen shows:

“Sale of Your Main Home

In this section we’ll record the sale of your main home, your principal residence……This does not include the sale of a vacation home or a second home.  You’ll report that in the investments section.

If you home was foreclosed or you received a 1099-S, you’ll need to report that here.

Did you sell or have your home foreclosed in 2021?....”

So, it tells me this section is for sale of main home only, and I am required to report it if I received a 1099-S whether I had a gain or loss (I had a loss).  I went ahead and selected “yes” to do the input to see what happened (given that it says main home sale only)

When I clicked “yes”, the following screens show:

• Sold a home – shows information that I need to have to get started
• Select who owned the home, and input address, city, state, zip code
• Sale Information - received a 1099-S (yes), input date sold, selling price, sales expense (which I input $150,000 price and $11,000 closing costs)
• Tell us about purchase of your home – date bought, adjusted cost basis (which I input $144,000 original purchase price plus improvements)
• Depreciation after May 6, 1997 (which I selected no)
• No exclusion – you have a loss of $5,000. Personal losses are not deductible (TurboTax tells me I have a loss that is not deductible.  Yet the form 8949 does not include the sale expense and shows a gain.  see below for I saw in form 8949)
• Home sale summary – displayed address and sale price of $150,000 (done)

Then I looked at Form 8949 for this entry and it showed the following:

• Box F checked (ok?)
• Column (a) – “main home sale – address”
• (b) – date acquired – purchase date
• (c) – date sold
• (d) – proceed - $150,000 sale price
• (e) – cost basis - $144,000 (only shows the purchase cost plus improvements, it does not include the $11,000 sale expense)
• (f) – EL – not sure what they mean, Exclusion (for main home) and Loss?
• (g) – negative of $6,000 (to make column (h) $0; however, it should show positive of $5,000, which should offset the $150,000-11,000-144,000 = $5,000 loss)
• (h) - $0

Then I went to the “investment income” section and in the “stocks, mutual funds, bonds, other” topic to see what it would do for inputting second home (since the "sale of home" section says "You’ll report that in the investments section."  I input the following:

• Did you get a 1099-B - no since I have a 1099-S
• Tell us about this sale – I selected “I’ll enter one sale at a time”, description (sale of second home), date sold, date acquired, sale proceeds ($150,000), cost of other basis ($11,000 closing costs plus $144,000 purchase costs and improvement = $155,000), holding period (long term Box F)
• Any of these less common items? – i.e., accrued market discount, wash sales – I did not input anything on this screen
• Was this a sale of employee stock – "no"
• Select any less common adjustments – I did not select any since they were not applicable
• Did you have another sale to enter – "no"
• Here’s your sales that are not reported on 1099-B – it displayed my entry of $150,000; I then selected done
• Do you other investment sales from another bank or brokage?  - "no"
• Here’s all the investment accounts we have so far – I selected done and it went goes back the 2021 income summary screen

Then I looked at Form 8949 for this entry and it showed the following:

• Box F checked (ok?)
• Column (a) – the description of what I entered
• (b) – date acquired – purchase date
• (c) – date sold
• (d) – proceed - $150,000 sale price
• (e) – cost basis - $155,000 (what I input cost plus improvements plus sales expense)
• (f) – blank
• (g) – blank
• (h) – negative of $5,000.  In theory, this is not correct before second home sale loss is not deductible.  However, TurboTax looked at this as a brokage transaction and allowed the loss.

The "Sale of Home" section says "This does not include the sale of a vacation home or a second home.  You’ll report that in the investments section."  And the "Investment Income" section does not appear to provide a mean to enter sale of second home.

I apologize for the long post, but I don’t see the topics or options that you said in your message in my TurboTax software, and I want to show you exactly what I entered and the results that I saw.  Please advise.  Thank you.