Does TurboTax work with more than 45 rental properties? TurboTax is telling me I have reached the limit after only 45 of my 55 houses. How do I enter the remaining 10?

[VolvoGirl]

Sorry Turbo Tax only has 15 Schedule E x 3 per page = 45.

I found an old answer that has ways to enter more into the Desktop versions.......

If TurboTax only allows 45 houses, I see 4 options:

(1)   Make the election to “group” some houses into one asset.  HOWEVER, that can be problematic when you sell the houses.  I would not advise that option unless you consult with a tax professional about it.

(2)   Fill out the last 5 houses manually on Schedule Es, and override Line 17 on the 1040 to reflect the ‘extra’ forms that you manually did.  HOWEVER, overriding in TurboTax voids their guarantee, and you would NEED to make sure the other numbers on the form adjust  appropriately from the override.  http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040se.pdf

(3)   Use professional software.  HOWEVER, you need to be very familiar with how a tax return works.  Professional software does not give you step-by-step questions.  You need to know what to enter and where.  https://accountants.intuit.com/tax/proseries/professional/ppr.jsp

(4)   Go to a tax professional.  I suspect that is what you may have done in previous years.  With 50 rental houses, I would suspect it is  quite expensive to hire a professional.

As a side note, except for option #1, you will not be ableto e-file.  The IRS has an e-file limit of 15 Schedule Es (3 houses per Schedule E).  You would need to file by paper and mail it.

[Carl]

One thing you can do is called "grouping". That's where you group multiple properties into one column of the SCH E. To do that, you enter each property as a physically separate asset in the assets/depreciation section making sure your acquisition dates and in services dates are correct for each individual house/asset listed. Then you have to combine the income and expenses, insurance, property taxes and mortgage interest amounts for that group of properties.

By doing it this way, if you sell one of the houses then you merely show the sale of that one asset in the group of properties listed in the assets/depreciation section. 

Whenever you do a property improvement to one of the grouped properties, just make sure you someone identify in the description, what property that improvment belongs to. Makes it simpler and easier should you ever sell one of the grouped properties so that you don't forget to report the sale of the property improvement also.

[tagteam]

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@VolvoGirl wrote:

(1)   Make the election to “group” some houses into one asset.  HOWEVER, that can be problematic when you sell the houses.  I would not advise that option unless you consult with a tax professional about it.

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You definitely would need to consult with a tax professional before grouping your rental activities.

First of all, you need to meet the real estate professional requirements.

See https://www.irs.gov/publications/p925#en_US_2018_publink1000104591

Further, TurboTax does not support the election for real estate professionals to aggregate their activities under Section 469(c) (7) of the Code.

See https://digitalasset.intuit.com/DOCUMENT/A7aTcVUwu/2018-unsupported-calcs-L1FQfTTgn-073019.pdf

Finally, suspended passive losses are not freed up until all of the activities in the group are sold.