Tax help for military filers

You have to sell as a personal home sale and mark "Military" for 'Other reason for sale". The new law allows persons on qualified extended duty in the U.S. Armed Services or the Foreign Service to suspend this five-year test period for up to 10 years of such duty time. 

Keep in mind, the capital gains will be excluded from your property but ordinary gains will still be taxable if have taken depreciation from your rental property in the past. Here is how to report.

1. Go to federal>income and expenses>less common income>sale of a home
2. Next few screens will ask address and sales information about the home including purchase information
3. Next question about the time you lived in the home, here you will answer no
4. Next question will ask did you use this home for any other purpose than your primary home, you will say yes and list the numbers of days you did not live in the home after 2008.
5. Scroll and answer questions when it asks for the reason for the sale, select other reasons
6. Next screen is where you indicate you are in the military.
7. Next screen asks if you are in the military or foreign service.  Here you would say yes in order to get the capital gains exclusion.
8. Next questions will ask how long you lived in the house and how long you owned the house.
9. Next question asks how much depreciation you deducted or allowed to be deducted since 1997.  If you rented the house, you would have claimed depreciation in past years.
10. Continue through the rest of the section.  At the end, the program will inform you of the excluded gain and then the ordinary gain on the sale of your house. Remember being in the military does not exclude the ordinary gain from the sale of this house.