What you are seeing is not at all uncommon. It's more common for rental property to operate at a loss every year on paper at tax filing time. When your taxable income goes down, there's a number of credits that get reduced or even eliminated because you don't qualify. You really can't get the whole picture of everything until after you have completed your tax return in it's entirety and are ready to file it. In the process, that refund/due amount is going to be all over the place. Remember, the program can only work with the numbers it has at "this" specific and explicit point in time.
