Recapturing Depreciation from 21 years ago

[Robe0965]

Last year we sold our home which we had owned for 32 years.  We rented out the home from 1988-1999.  I was in the military at the time and as we wanted to return to the  home to live in after I retired, we rented it while I served in various military assignments.  In reporting the sale of the home Turbotax software asked for the depreciation I declared on the home from May 6 1977 until we returned to it in 1999.  I declared the standard MACRS deprecitation.  I do not have any documentation to support it.  I was then asked to enter the AMT depreciation for the home.  How do I calculate or recover this information.   Any ideas on how to solve this dilema?

[Andybill]

You could login to your irs account and see if your returns from those years are available online, or call them...

[AmeliesUncle]

What is the date you moved back in?

If you give me your original purchase price, and also the estimated value of the land when you purchased the home (for example, if you bought the home for $100,000, you might estimate that $25,000 of that amount was for the land), I can give you pretty good estimates for what to enter.

[AmyC · Accepted solution]

You will need to have an idea of how much you think you had on your tax return as a depreciable amount which is house minus land value. Then the house (not the land) would have been depreciated over 27.5 years. 

The AMT depreciation would probably be the same as the regular unless you or your wife had more income than your military pay that pushed you into the Alternative Minimum Tax. Do you remember ever dealing with that? The purpose is to limit deductions.

At the end of the day, you can only do your best with what you have. 

Awesome! @AmeliesUncle always has great helpful answers.