How to enter rental expenses that should not be prorated

[tomandjerry1]

I rent a room in my home on AirBnB.  Last year it was rented for 300 nights out of 365. I have used schedule E to report my income and used the mode where TurboTax uses the percentage of my home this room represents.  During the year I bought sheets, curtains, towels, and a desk that are used exclusively for this rented room.  Can I deduct the total costs for these expenses from my rental income?  The only expenses that TurboTax appears not to prorate are the "Management fee"and "auto expenses."  All other expenses and, supplies, etc. are being prorated. Am I not entitled to claim the full costs of these items which are only used for the rented room?

[TurtleAnna]

After the "any other expenses" screen, there is a screen titled "Any Miscellaneous Expenses."  Expenses entered on this screen will not be prorated based on rental usage.

[tomandjerry1]

That's what I had hoped too, but if you switch to forms mode and check the Schedule E worksheet, expenses entered as "Miscellaneous Expenses" are indeed prorated on the worksheet using the percent I entered that reflects the portion of the house that I rent out.  The worksheet takes the total value from the 1st column (a) then multiples by default percent of house being rented in column (b) to get a value in the column (c) which is used to compute the deductible expense.  True, the worksheet has the other two columns (d) and (e) grey'ed out, but TTAX is not using 100% as the prorating factor.  Maybe I should override the field in (b) with 100% to get around this?

[tomandjerry1]

So, after a bit more trial-and-error, in forms mode, Schedule E worksheet, if you right click on the percentage box of line 19-a "Other Expenses" then choose the "About Line 19-Percentage-a" selection from the context menu, you will open a dialog box titled "On Demand Tax Guidance", and be positioned at the "Percentage Column" portion of this guidance.  The text here says:

Percentage Column

If you have checked the percentage ownership and entered a percentage less than 100% and for any individual expense line your ownership percentage is different, enter that percent in the percent column, and the program will use this value, rather than the percentage on Line O. If your percentage ownership is 100 percent, but your allocation is less then 100%, use column (a) to enter your allocated amount for each individual expense line.

Based on this it looks to me that the only way to get TTAX to use 100% of the expense is to follow the above instructions using 100 in the percent column.  Apparently in Step-by-Step mode (alone) there is no way to enter expenses which should be allocated at 100%?

I followed these instructions and everything seems to have worked.  It is NOT at all apparent that this is the only way to handle this situation.

[tomandjerry1]

Added follow-up.  TTAX seems to be happy with this procedure (putting 100 in the percentage column  for those expenses which should be fully deducted from rental income) and the error check did not complain.  I recommend anyone new to this type of rental (i.e. renting a room in you home for part of the year) to examine the information TTAX provides as "On Demand Tax Guidance" for the Schedule E worksheet.  This is a gold mine of useful information.  For example,

Days Rented at Fair Rental Value

In figuring the fair rental days, count only the days the property was actually rented at fair rental value. A day that the property was offered for rent but not rented does not count as a rental day.

The section under "Days of Personal Use" is very helpful for people who rent out just a room in their home (together, perhaps, with access to other shared spaces such as a bathroom, kitchen, deck, living room, etc.)

Also in this TTAX Guidance is the following:

Your rental-only expenses, the rental portion of mortgage interest,
and the rental portion of real estate taxes are fully deductible.

and

If your personal use does not exceed the greater of 14 days or 10% of the days the property is rented, the rental portion of the general home operating expenses is not limited.

This tax provision explains why you are asked to include the number of days in the year the property is rented and the number of days of personal use.