I offered my house (for the first time) on airBnB from April 8 to April 27 last year. It was eventually rented for just 5 days (of these 20 days). How best should i report this using Turbotax (Premier)?
More specifically:
1) when Turbotax asks me to report how many days was the property rented for, do I input 20 or 5?
2) when Turbotax later asks me to report my property tax, mortgage interest, and utilities, do I report the amount for the entire year (because Turbotax will prorate the amounts accordingly)? or should I calculate the amount of these expenses that corresponds to the 20 (or 5) days, and enter only that amount?
3) since this the first time i had this property on AirBnB, when Turbotax asks me in the very beginning if "i converted this property to rental for the first time in 2019" do I check the box (reporting that I converted)? or not (because it was only for a few days)?
Please advise. Thanks in advance!
Duplicate post.
Since you only had a renter in the property for less than 14 days for the entire tax year, I wouldn't bother converting anything. Simply report your 5 days worth of rental income as miscellaneous income and be done with it. No SCH E is needed and you don't have to deal with all that crap of converting the property to rental and back to personal use in the same tax year. (That's a *REAL* pain with TurboTax). Of couse when you do this, you can't claim any expenses against that income. But so what? It's only 5 days of rental income. Another $1000 give or take, is not going to break you tax-wise.