Investors & landlords

I'll try to make this as simple as I can because the at-risk rules are very complicated in practice but really don't apply to most normal taxpayers.  This information also wouldn't be found on any of your forms.

A good rule of thumb is if you don't know what it means - then its almost certainly "All investment is at risk."

Basically, if your business were to fail or lose money and you would personally lose money, then your investment is at-risk.  If you would not personally lose any money even if your business failed because someone else is guaranteeing your investment or through a non-recourse loan, then your investment is not at-risk.  The reason you need to make this distinction is that the IRS will not allow you to take a loss on your Schedule C if you are not at-risk of actually losing any money.

See this TurboTax article for further explanation -

https://ttlc.intuit.com/replies/5205776