How to split interest and taxes for two rental rooms?

[billjans]

I rent two rooms in my house.  Each has different square footage, different rental rates, and different occupancy periods.  I can create a Schedule E entry for each room, but in doing so the personal use portion of mortgage interest and taxes is not calculated correctly.  How can I get the personal use portion for Schedule A to calculate correctly?

[MaryK4]

You can enter both rooms as one entry on your Schedule E because it is the same building- then you can designate the square footage percentage.  If the rooms were unoccupied because there was no renter while you were looking for someone new (as long as you did not stop intending to rent the room and use it for yourself), you just enter the rent you received and can continue to deduct the depreciation and expenses (because the rooms were "available for rent").  This will give you the correct amounts for your Schedule A.  

[billjans]

I really do not understand now I can create only one Schedule E entry for both rooms when I have different expenses and rent revenue for each room.  I don't think combining expenses and revenue in one Schedule E entry will give me an accurate result.  What I would really like to do is enter the personal use portion manually on the tax and interest deduction worksheet.

[MaryK4]

You can made the manual entries, but you will need to use TurboTax desktop.  See How do I manually fill out my tax forms in TurboTax Desktop?  @billjans 

[billjans]

I believe I found a solution using Turbotax Deluxe, but I have not completed my taxes for other reasons, so I don't know if Turbotax error checking will agree with me.  I'd prefer not to have anyone else adopt my solution only to find there are problems with error checking or filing of the tax return.  I believe can be reached through email to discuss this further.

[billjans]

My solution was to check the box on Line N under ownership percentage but do not enter a percentage on Line O.  The result was that all the personal use values under expenses were blank.  Then I entered the correct personal use values on the Home Mortgage Expense Worksheet.  However, TurboTax flags leaving the percentage blank as an error in the Federal SmartCheck, so I am back to square one.  Unless TurboTax will help me out.

[billjans]

I found a workaround that results in the correct values for taxes and mortgage interest on Schedules A and E.  On the Schedule E Worksheet for each room, I checked the box on Line N and entered 100% on Line O.  Then in Column a under Expenses I entered a number and in Column b under Percentage a entered a number that allowed me to calculate the correct values for Columns c and e.  The result passed the Smartcheck with no errors.  I am assuming that the Column a numbers mentioned above, which are not "real" numbers, are not used beyond the worksheets.