I found your reply answered many of my questions. Thanks you so much!
Here's another twist on the whole "renting rooms in my home" tax problem. We rent out two rooms in a four bedroom house but we are only there six months or less out of the year. When we are not there I presume we can take 100% of the utilities as an expense, since we aren't receiving any benefit from them.
Is that correct?
Since our renters have the entire house (save our two bedrooms) for their exclusive use when we're gone, can we convert to a square footage allocation of other expenses (mortgage interest & taxes) for whatever those periods of time add up to over the year (probably close to half of the year)? If the law is moot on this I will presume it's okay.
I was surprised to learn insurance is not deductible as it is a mandatory cost of owning a mortgaged house. It happens to be twice as expensive in the state where we have this house as in our permanent residence state. I sure would like to be able to expense part of it!
