Rental Income

[mabb602]

Does my rental income include my mortgage payment or is the rental income the difference from my mortgage compared to rent paid by my tenants. For example, mortgage is $1000, and I am renting the house out for $1500, is my rental income the $1500 or just $500 (the difference). I apologize, first time renting a house and I read something about operating expenses but don't seem to find that section on turbo tax.

[SharonD007]

No, your rental income does not include your mortgage payment nor is it the difference between your rental income and your mortgage. Your rental income is the difference of the amount that you received from renting your property minus ordinary and necessary expenses that you incur from renting your property. There’s a list of expenses that you can deduct. Some of them are utilities, repairs, property tax, mortgage interest (not your mortgage payment), depreciation, cleaning, and maintenance). Please review the TurboTax article Rental Real Estate and Taxes for more information.

Follow the steps below to enter your rental property:

1. Open or continue your return if you haven’t already
2. Locate the Search bar in the upper right of your screen. Search for rentals and select the Jump to link at the top of the search results
3. Answer Yes to the question Did you have any income from rentals or royalties?
4. On the next screen, Let's see if you're a real estate professional, select any options that apply to you.
5. On the screen What are you here to report?, select Rental property and Continue
   • If you have more than one rental property to report, no problem—just start with one, and we’ll come back to the other one(s) later
6. On the following screens, we'll ask you to enter all the info we need about your rental property, including a description of the property, your rental income, any expenses and assets, and other less common situations about your rental
7. When you reach the Here’s your rental property info screen, double-check the info you entered to make sure everything is accurate and that you haven’t left anything out
8. Once you’ve entered all your info, you’ll be taken to the Your income and expenses screen
   • If you have more rentals to enter, scroll down to Rental Properties and Royalty Income (Sch E) and select Edit/Add next to this line
   • On the Your 2022 rentals and royalties summary screen, select Add another rental or royalty
   • From here, follow these instructions again, starting with Step 5, and repeat until you’ve entered all your rental income.

Please refer to the TurboTax Help article Where do I enter income and expenses from a rental property? for additional information.

[mabb602]

Thank you so much for the clarification, I truly appreciate your help, and it does makes since now. Guess I am just overthinking it a bit and just needed reassurance. Hope you have a great rest of your day and weekend. 

[Carl]

I see folks over think this all the time. Heck, even I wasn't immune when I started the rental thing about 30 years ago. Basically, rental income is any income received from any  source for any reason, concerning the rental property.