Business & farm

I have opened a sanitized version of your tax return in TurboTax and gone through the steps to make the De Minimus Safe Harobor Election.  Here are the step-by-step instructions:

• Click on the Federal Taxes tab
• Click on Wages & Income 
• Click on Continue 
• Answer "I'll choose what I work on"
• Next to "Rental Properties" click on Update or Start 
• For the questions about real estate professional, answer "None of the above"
• Next to one of your Properties, click on "Edit"
• Scroll down to Assets/Depreciation  and click on Update 
• You should see the question "Do you want to go Directly to Asset Summary"?  Indicate "No - I want to review my answers..."
• The next screen will be "Did you buy any items for any business, rental property and/or farm that cost $2,500 or less in 2023?
• Indicate Yes and click on Continue

You will be asked if every item cost $2,500 or less.  If you answer No, you will be asked additional questions about making improvements to the property.  If you answer Yes, your next screen will be your Asset Listing.  You will want to delete your Water Heater that cost $1,386 in order to expense the entire amount.  You will then enter your Water Heater in the expenses section.  If you answer No to the question above, you will be asked additional questions about making improvements to the property, but will end up in the same place.

Based on your last response, I think the problem may have been that you were entering items as Assets and expecting/looking for the option to take the De Minimus Safe Harbor election and expense 100% of the asset.  That's not how it works.  When you indicate that you have purchases $2,500 or less and want to expense them, the program adds the safe harbor election to your return.  You then add all items that cost $2,500 or less as an Expense, rather than setting them up as Assets.  When you take the election, it applies to all items that cost $2,500 or less.  You cannot pick and choose which ones you want to add as an asset and which ones you want to add as an expense.     

Let us know if you're able to make it work.