I rented a room out of my home from Aug-Dec in 2019. I'm on a screen that says "Enter Common Expenses" and it lists things like "Advertising, Travel, Cleaning, etc." There is a box that says "Utilities." Do I enter all my utilities expenses for 2019, all utilities expenses for aug-Dec, or just 50% for my roommate (or some such calculation based on what she used)? What about the boxes for insurance and real estate taxes? Or should all this come out in deductions??
The expenses that are related to your home and the portion of your home that was rented will need to be prorated so that you are only claiming a portion of the expenses that are related to the rental part of your home.
First, determine the percentage of your total square feet that is being used as a rental. For example, if your total square feet of the whole house is 1000 and the rental space is 250 square feet, then 25% of the house is being used as a rental property. That means 25% of the expenses related to your whole house can be deducted as a rental expense. But, that 25% is assuming that you have rented the space for all 12 months of the year.
Since you only rented the space from August through December, that is 5 months out of 12 months. So, after you have calculated the total of the expenses based on the square feet being rented, you will then take only 5/12 of the amount on the 2019 tax return.
Here's an example: using the 250 out of 1000 square feet as the size of the rental property, suppose you paid $1200 in utility expenses for the whole year. The rental portion of the utilities would be 25% of the $1200 or $300. Then taking only 5/12 of the $300 to account for the 5 months of rental, you would claim $125 for rental utility expense.