For a detached rental on my residential property, where should I enter 1098 mortgage interest - as rental property expense or deduction? Does TT auto allocate?

[ran2-chen]

The rental (a guest house above my garage) is 10% of my home's square footage and was rented out for 45 days this year via airbnb, but I assume I should select single family home that I rent a part of as opposed to short term rental / vacation home. TT asks for total from 1098 in the rental expense section, but I don't see anywhere for me to enter square footage and wonder if I missed something because I'm asked to put the mortgage interest in the deductions section too (double dipping?)  When I enter full mortgage interest, real estate taxes, insurance premiums, and repairs into the rental section, the total costs add up to 20k  for a rental that only brought in 2.5k in 45 days. Should TT be aut-allocating to reflect the proper proportion of business expenses to personal deductions?

[DianeW777]

You can do your own math and select single rental, then figure out all the expenses that should apply only to the rental including the mortgage interest and real estate taxes (reduce them for the itemized deductions portion).

If you did not rent it out all year, then you must enter the number of days it was rented and then the number of personal use days, if applicable. Otherwise enter zero. (See the image below - after selecting Vacation or Short Term rental).

By using the Tax Tools you can take a quick review of your 1040:

• To find Tools: 
  • Sign into your TurboTax account and open or continue your return. 
  • Select Tax Tools in the left menu. 
  • You'll find Tools beneath Tax Tools.
  • Select View Tax Summary
  • Select Preview My 1040 (left black panel)