I had a few years of renting a room in my home and failed to include a deduction for depreciation for those tax years since I incorrectly assumed depreciation should only be used when renting the entire house. I was wrong. Now I am renting the entire house and realize I should have been including a depreciation component for the fraction of my home the room rental represented. So this year I plan to file Form 3115 together with my FED taxes to include the additional "catch up" depreciation deduction. I believe I understand the process and how to fill out Form 3115 but have a couple of questions regarding how to answer TurboTax interview questions. Even though I failed to include depreciation for those prior years (too many to just file amended returns) I should still let TurboTax assume I had been claiming depreciation for those prior years so that it will compute the correct depreciation deduction for this year.
Then I will compute the catch up amount separately and include this as an "other expense" on line 19 with description "Catch up depreciation from Form 3115". So the question I've got here is what value should appear in the "Total Depreciation Claimed in Previous Years" interview box. I've assume I should not put 0 in this box so that TurboTax computes the correct amount for this year. Also, the catch up depreciation for the earlier years (2019-2023) must use just the starting basis value for the fraction of the home the room represents. Will this fly? I understand that to include Form 3115 with my return I won't be able to eFile.
Lastly, the rental property is in Vermont. Any idea whether I need to file something analogous with my Vermont state return?
