I rent part of my home, and have a home office. Should I enter my property tax in Rental Expense, Home Office Expense, or Personal Home Deductions?

[Goffredo]

Hello!  I rent out two rooms of my house, and I use a third as a home office.  There are three separate places I can enter the property tax:

1) Business Income : Rental Property Expenses

2) Business Income : Home Office Expenses

3) Personal Deductions : Your Home : Property Tax

Can you kindly suggest how to enter my property tax in this scenario?

Can you also suggest how to enter other expenses that fall into the same predicament, such as entire home HOA fees, entire home repairs, entire home utilities?

Thank you for your help, I know you must be busy this time of year!

[PatriciaV · Accepted solution]

If you are Self-Employed and report your business activity on Schedule C, you would report your Home Office Deduction under the Business topic in TurboTax Home & Business.

When you start with the home office deduction for your business, TurboTax will help you report all related expenses properly so that they are allocated to your Home Office and to your Itemized Deductions on Schedule A. Only mortgage interest and property taxes may be deducted on Schedule A. Your other shared expenses would be allocated to the Home Office space based on square footage.

When you rent out part of your home, you may also take a portion of those two expenses (interest and taxes) as Rental Expenses on Schedule E. Work on this topic after you have completed Schedule C and reviewed your Itemized Deductions (under Deductions & Credits). There is no Home Office deduction for Schedule E as the IRS prohibits this for passive activities like rental properties.

Be sure you do not report more than the total that you paid. To avoid this, you may need to adjust how you report your homeowner deductions among Schedule C, Schedule E, and Schedule A. TurboTax will help you do this, but ultimately it is your responsibility to ensure that you have not overstated your deductions.

[Goffredo]

Thanks for your prompt and thorough reply!  I think I jumped right in and deducted my property tax under Personal Deductions, before I started the Home Office section.  

Can I simply go in and zero out the property tax entries in Personal Deductions and in Home Office, and then follow your suggestion to (re) start with this deduction under Home Office?

I will definitely review the forms to make sure I didn't double-dip on this deduction or otherwise confuse TurboTax.

[PatriciaV]

Yes, return to Your Home >> Real Estate Taxes and remove your entry. Then review your entries for the Home Office first, followed by Rental Properties. Finally, check to see the amount TurboTax transferred to your homeowner deductions. This is the best sequence to take.