Overwrite Percentage of Vehicle Business Use

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 9, 2020
1 reply
17 views

Regarding the disposition of a vehicle: The percentage of business use of a vehicle varied over several years. I have calculated the average, but TurboTax Deluxe uses the percentage of only the final year to determine the business portion of the vehicle purchase price. This results in an inaccurate gain/loss. How and where can I overwrite this percentage to get a true gain/loss? I know user SR_22 posted a similar question on Feb. 3, but there are no replies to date, so I have provided a bit of additional detail. At this point, the only solution I can see is to alter the purchase price to get a correct final figure and keep detailed notes. Obviously this is not ideal. Ideally, TurboTax would allow the correct average to be used instead of the final year percentage. Thank you for any help!

ThomasM125

Level 15

The program should ask for the purchase price of the vehicle when your report the sale. This is what I did:

1. Found the "Vehicle Expenses" section for the business where I use the auto

1. Went to the "Vehicle Summary" and clicked on "Edit"

2. Next screen said "Tell us about your vehicle" and had an option "I stopped using this vehicle in 2019"

3. Work through that section and when you come to the sale part, it asks for the cost of the vehicle

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PCFAuthor

Level 2

Thank you for this. There is inconsistent treatment in this section. On the sales price, it has me enter the business portion of the sale, but for the purchase price, it asks for the total vehicle cost and then automatically applies the 2019 business use percentage to that cost.

So let's say I have a $100,000 vehicle used for 3 years at 25%, 50%, and 75% business use (average 50%), and then sell it for $50,000. I can correctly enter that the business portion of the sales price as $25,000, but then I have to enter the total vehicle purchase price as $100,000 from which it then calculates the business portion. Because the program only knows the 2019 75% business use from the mileage I have entered, it then inaccurately assigns the business portion of the purchase to be $75,000 instead of the correct $50,000. I would be OK with the program not carrying over the previous years' mileage if it would let me enter the correct average percentage, but it doesn't. Early on in the section there is a checkbox to mark that the years have different percentages of use, but it does nothing. Since I can't reduce the business percentage of the purchase price from the 75% to 50%, I have had to alter the purchase price to arrive at the correct amount.

The program needs to allow the user to enter an average business percentage use rather than assuming all years are the same as the final year. Thank you again for your help!