distinction between "Vacation Home Loss Limitation", passive activity losses, and carryforwards

[ljwobker]

Doing my Schedule E, modeling for tax court vs IRS method.  One thing I'm confused by - in column D of the Sch E worksheet, labelled "Vacation Home Loss Limitation" there are all the various expenses from the rental property that are not allocated to either schedule E or personal use.  It's clear that the amounts reported to Sch E are equal to the income on the property -- this makes sense as I can't have a loss due to passive activity limits.  Then whatever is not allocated to personal use is left in this mystery loss limitation column.

But what is not clear to me is where these amount end up going?  I would have thought they would be carried forward as some kind of passive loss, but I can't find anywhere on another form that matches these values.

I have carried forward passive losses from previous years that I can see in Form 8582, but I would expect that these losses should accumulate (increase) by the amount of disallowed loss each year because the property shows a book loss in each of these years.  

[AmeliesUncle]

They would have been allocated to Schedule E (and possibly end up as Passive Loss Carryovers) except for the fact you used the property for personal use.

There is no official form that reports the Vacation Home carryovers, but it will appear on one of the worksheets. If you use TurboTax next year, it should automatically carry over to next year.

[ljwobker]

Right - I understand how some of these are allocated to the personal (Schedule A) portion, and this varies with the tax court vs IRS methods.  What I'm trying to understand is how (why?) there are some amounts that appear to disappear into this "Vacation Loss limitation" void, not to appear anywhere else.... 

[AmeliesUncle]

Because of the personal use, you are not allowed a loss (and it is not a Passive Loss).  The "vacation home" column is the way the program shows that the loss is not allowed (but will be carried forward to next year).