Why sign in to the Community?

  • Submit a question
  • Check your notifications
Sign in to the Community or Sign in to TurboTax and start working on your taxes
New Member
posted Feb 24, 2021 8:24:04 PM

In 2020 I did not attmpt to rent a prpty claimed as rental in prev yrs. Turbo tax is generating a Sch E in error

During the interview section TurboTax indicated that the property shouldn't be included in this year's taxes, but the schedule E  was generated anyway and it keeps giving me an error "needs review" to fill out the days rented for the property, and it won't accept 0 days rented.

0 2 305
2 Replies
Expert Alumni
Feb 25, 2021 6:23:03 AM

It's very important for you to keep a copy of your records for the rental property since it will be important for tax purposes until you dispose of it (sell it). 

 

You may need to delete the Schedule E from your return by using the steps below. Be sure to delete any form associated with the Schedule E (worksheets, depreciation as example).

  1. Open or continue your return in TurboTax.
  2. In the left menu, select Tax Tools and then Tools.
  3. In the pop-up window Tool Center, choose Delete a form.
  4. Select Delete next to the form/schedule/worksheet in the list and follow the instructions.  

Level 15
Feb 25, 2021 6:43:40 AM

Did you indicate on your 2019 tax return that you converted the property from rental to personal use? If you did not, then that is why it was imported.

When you convert a rental property to personal use, upon starting to work through the rental property about 3-4 screens in, there's a selection for you to indicate you converted the property to personal use. Of course you would select that. But you're not done.

You have to work through each individual asset one at a time in the assets/depreciation section and indicate you converted each asset listed, to personal use. Until you do that, as far as the IRS is concerned it's still a rental. Therefore, SCH E will continue to be imported each year.

 

If you did not do all this on your 2019 return, then you can just do it on your 2020 return with a conversion date of 1/1/2020. That way, you don't have to deal with amending a prior year tax return.

 

Now if you did "in fact" do the conversion to personal use on your 2019 tax return and the data was imported anyway, that generally means you missed something. Otherwise, you can just delete the SCH E from the 2020 tax return.

 

The item most commonly missed in situations like yours, is vehicle use. If you claimed "ANY" vehicle use on that rental, then you must also work through the Business Vehicle Use section of the SCH E and show the vehicle removed for personal use.