Own a multi-family home.

[phildbs]

I currently own a multi-family home with my boyfriend (not married). We live in the upper unit and we rent out the lower unit to my father. We charge him $550 a month. When we go to file our taxes, do we both put the full amount of rental income that he has paid us or do we split the total in half?

[IsabellaG]

If you rented out part of your home, you will do your own calculation and report half of the income and half of the expenses.

An important issue here is that you say you rented to your father for $550/month. Is this a fair rental price that you would charge an unrelated party? If not, you will only be able to claim your expenses up to the amount of income you received. In other words, you can’t claim a loss.

[phildbs]

I don't believe I will be claiming any expenses. But when I went through turbo tax and it asks for information on my mortgage lender paperwork, I'm not sure that it understands that me and my boyfriend co-own the house. Do we both just claim the full value of the mortgage payments and interest as listed on the 1098 and 1099-T?

[IsabellaG]

No, you'd have to split it between you.

[phildbs]

So do we simply just halve all of the values in the 1098 and 1099-Int? Or does turbotax do that automatically? I guess that's the part that's confusing me.

[IsabellaG]

Yes, that's what I meant by "you will do your own calculation and report half of the income and half of the expenses."

[IsabellaG]

Are you entering this in the Rental section of TurboTax?

[phildbs]

Well we only had the home for a few months with the rental income totaling $4400. So when we both file separately, we would each simply put in $2200 for rental income.

And then when we go to claim the mortgage interest on the home we would just divide all the values by two and file that way?