Thank you for the response.
I am fairly certain there was no depreciation in the past years. In fact, I have a foreign property that I started renting in 2015 and that one has been properly depreciating so I can see what it looks like when done properly. Also, as part of a consulting business, I'm depreciating a vehicle. So when I look in my 2018, Schedule E, line 18 "Depreciation expense or depletion", I see an amount of column B (the foreign rental property) but nothing on column A (the subject rental property). In addition, I have been keeping track of all my expenses so in Schedule E, I would have seen the depreciation expense but the totals only reflect the actual expenses associated with the rental. It's my fault for not catching this but I was just "answering the questions"!
As per your suggestion, I also searched for form 4562. In 2018, there are a total of 4 forms, 2 for the vehicle, and two for the foreign property but nothing for the property I sold in 2019. Same in 2017 (no Schedule E, line 18 amount, no 4562 forms). In fact, I looked through all my tax returns back till 2008 and there has never been depreciation. In 2010 and back, Schedule E has the depreciation at line 20 of Schedule E (as opposed to 18).
One thing I also realized is that in 2007, my taxes were done by an outfit that will remain unnamed (not sure if they are still in business) and that's when the property went into being a rental; no depreciation then either. When I started doing it myself in 2008 using TT, the rental wasn't new so maybe this is why it did not trigger TT to begin depreciating and it just stayed that way. Frankly, I can't even run the 2008 TT version anymore - I only have the PDF records.
All in all, you are confirming my suspicion that this is beyond doing it myself with TT. It is tempting to just file like that, but the difference in the refund if having the depreciation versus not having it is pretty large so I will file for an extension and hire a pro to file form 3115 and hopefully clean this up.
