Personal Days - Rented part of my home Jan - Aug

[LindseyM84]

Hello!

Turbo Tax wants me to Zero out my personal days. I rented out part of my home from January through August, they moved out and now I am still living here in my own home. 

II have all of my rental expenses entered and everything, but it keeps wanted me to zero out the personal use days. 

Any help would be appreciated because I am at a loss of what to do!

[Carl]

Here's some clarification for you, since you rented out a part of your home.

- Percentage of floor space that was classified as residental rental property - This number will be less than 100%. Period.

- Percentage of business use. This number will be ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. For the period of time you classified that space as a rental, it was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT business use.

- Number of days rented. The day count starts on the first day a renter "could" have moved in. This is the date you converted it from personal use, to rental property use. The day count ends on the day you converted it from rental property use, back to personal use.

- Number of days of personal use. This is ***ZERO***. For the period of time the space was classified as a rental, you used it """ZERO""" days for personal use. What you used it for while it was not classified as a rental just flat out does not count for anything.

[LindseyM84]

Thank you! I have seen you answer a lot about this issue. I have marked it as ZERO and now feel confident. 

One more question - hoping you can help.

What do I do about my Mortgage Interest and RE Taxes. Do I enter the full amounts in both sections (my personal and my "rental property")? I chose to let TT do the calculations for me on all of my Rental Expenses, so wondering if I need to do some manual calculations for my personal portion of these taxes when adding them on my Deductions section, or do I not add them at all in that section since I added them through my Sch E rental portion? I hope that makes sense!

[Carl]

You enter your mortgage interest and property taxes for your primary residence *ONE* *TIME* *ONLY* on your tax return. If you are working through the program the way it is designed and intended to be used, then you deal with the SCH E rental stuff first.

If you elect to have the program do the splits for you, then it will split the property taxes, mortgage interest, and ***SOME*** of the other things for you. So it's important that you read the small print on each and every screen, so you know whats going on.

When you elect to have the program do the splits for you, then you enter the 1098-Mortgage Interest Statement in the SCH E section exactly as printed. (see notes below). Then when you are finished with the SCH E section entirely and have fogotten about it by the time you get to the Deductions and Credits section, you'll see in the "your home" section, one of the screens will clearly inform you that it already has information for mortgage interest and property taxes, and to not enter that same information again.

NOTE: The program does not split the property insurance, because property insurance on your primary residence is not deductible. It never has been. I'm warning you about this because many lenders will include the property insurance paid from escrow, on the 1098 form. However, the percentage of your property insurance that is equal to the percentage of your residence that is being rented out, is deductible on SCH E. It's up to *YOU* to figure that percentage and enter the correct amount in the SCH E section of the program where is asks for the insurance amount. (It's one of the boxes in the rental expenses section.)
So if you elect to have the program split "all" the expenses for you (and I recommend you do), understand that the property insurance deduction that applies to the rental will "NOT" be figured by the program, since it's not split.