Excess depreciation on rental property

[abellamy]

I have a tax client for TurboTax that has had a rental property since 2013.  She found the 4562 for when she place the rental property in use and it was calculated using the correct amounts, which deducted the land value for the cost basis.  Not sure what happened to the years in between then and now.  She self-prepared some returns and the depreciation ended up being over $20,000 each year.  I was going to fill out the 3115 form, but I don't have documents for all the prior years to know exactly how much depreciation was claimed in each year.

I have been researching how to enter excess depreciation in IEP by doing a Sec 481(a) adjustment.  All the instructions I am finding doesn't follow the information in TurboTax Rental Properties.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[abellamy]

You are told to enter the excess depreciation as income on the Schedule E as a negative number in other expenses.  There is no other expense item and you can enter a negative number as an expense it has to be above zero.

[Mike9241]

if you don't know how much she's claimed because she does have the tax forms for some years,  the only guidance we can provide is that you can obtain copies of the returns for the years 2018 or 2019 forward by filing Form 4506 with the IRS and paying the fee. The IRS only maintains the past seven years, so if you need earlier years .........................

let me put it in a different way. How can you do a 481 adjustment when you don't know whether she took too much or too little?

[AmeliesUncle]

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@abellamy wrote:

 She found the 4562 for when she place the rental property in use and it was calculated using the correct amounts,

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It sounds like she established a correct Accounting Method in 2013.  That means that Form 3115 and §481(a) Adjustments do NOT apply.

The errors are corrected by amending the years that had the error.