@Alpaca If TurboTax support told you that assets and depreciation does not transfer from a prior year tax data file to the current year tax return, then what they told you is absolutely incorrect. That is one of the benefits for transferring tax data from the prior year to the current year with using a tax data file.
I have used TurboTax for years and have assets and depreciation on assets for rentals using Schedule E and business assets on Schedule C using the TurboTax desktop Premier software. All the information transfers from one year to the next.
I notified a TurboTax Moderator to take a look at this post and investigate why you were told this.
For your situation starting a New Tax Return was the correct response to make sure the information transferred over properly. If the information from 2018 was not transferred to 2019, then do you have more than one 2018 tax data file in the TurboTax folder?
Do you still have the 2018 software installed? If so, close the 2019 program, open the 2018 program and continue your 2018 tax return. Verify that your 2018 return has all the Asset worksheets and the depreciation schedules. Then save the 2018 tax return.
Now start a 2019 New Tax Return and transfer the 2018 tax data file. Your 2018 data should transfer over with no issues.
