I've done the taxes for my fiancee's sole proprietor / self-employed business here on TurboTax for the past ten years+ and this year has been very frustrating.
First, the order that things are presented on the page for the business is Expenses first, including cost of goods, and THEN income... so at the very least, the Home Office deduction (standard) kept changing its mind about whether we were eligible or not, because there wasn't any income, other deductions may have been doing weird things, too, I am unsure. Looking down the list of expenses once we were finished, everything seems to line up with her tracking and receipts, except that very fluid Home Office deduction number.
However, my main concern is that the Home Office deduction keeps adjusting itself so that our AGI becomes $0 ... is that how it's supposed to work? This is the first year that our deductions are adding up to more than our income, which would seem to indicate a Net Operating Loss, but with the Home Office deduction continuing to change itself based on all the other numbers, I am unsure.
It even popped up a question during wrap-up of some section about whether we'd like to officially declare a NOL, but having not been in this situation before, I don't know if that is the proper response, or if TurboTax is secretly storing the actual amount of loss somewhere, even though it's constantly adjusting the AGI to zero.
