How to claim property taxes on rental property?

[BBJohn52]

I’m trying to post property tax charges to my tax form

[DS30 · Accepted solution]

It depends,

• If the property was available to rent for the entire year, you would include all the rental property taxes under the rental section even if it was only rented out for half the year.
• If the property was available for rent for the entire year but you have personal use days during half the year, then you would include the full amount under the rental section but half would be allocated by TurboTax to rental and half would be allocated to personal deduction under Schedule A.
• If the property was put into rental service or taken out of service during the year (ie: converted a main residence to a rental July 1st) then you would only put the portion of the rental property taxes for the year related to when the property was considered a rental under the rental section and the other half would be available for a personal deduction under Schedule A

To enter rental information in TurboTax, log into your tax return (for TurboTax Online sign-in, click Here and click on "Take me to my return") type "rental income and expenses" in the search bar then select "jump to rental income and expenses". TurboTax will guide you in entering this information.

Enter your rental property information through the TurboTax guided questions (or edit your rental property if it is already entered) until you come to a screen that is titled, Your "rental property name" rental summary.

Select to edit your rental expenses>I'll choose what I work on> The first screen is titled "Enter Common Expenses". You will enter your rental property taxes here .

[jc-martin1988]

When going through this portion of Turbo Tax, the first question is "how many days have you rented this property?" I enter a value, we will say 90 days rented, and then I go to fill out the rest of the information. Income, property taxes, insurance, etc. Since I've already put in a time period rented, do I prorate each section? For example, if I paid 5,000 in property tax for 2018, do I enter 1,232.88 or 5000? I'm not sure if Turbo Tax calculates the portion based on the information I have entered. I don't want to to prorate my property tax and then have Turbo Tax do it again.

[lady_mcse]

I'm just another user, no expert, but in my experience it does seem to do all the prorating for you, and that's why it asks you about the days rented.  In the example you gave, you'd enter the 5,000 and TT would figure out the rest.