We are renting our home and property to our church. The church pays us $400.00 in rent per month. The confusing part to us is that we live in the home as well. The church meets our our home Wednesdays from 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm and Sundays from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. However, there is a lot of time spent before these services to prepare and maintain our home. Sometimes we host church workdays on Saturdays before Sunday service and host board meetings at other times during the week. My question is this: We've always itemized deductions due to large mortgage interest payments and supplies and dollar contributions to our church. In order to host the services at our home we spend large amounts of money on food supplies, cleaning supplies, maintenance, equipment and more. Now that the church is paying us rent, which in no way covers our expense, do we itemizes deductions as charitable deductions or is it more beneficial to list them as rental expense? If so how do i file?
